Ernesto Liccardo - Stem Cells

Ernesto Liccardo's most recent research follows the aesthetic theories developed by Lucio Fontana and other Spatialist artists, resulting in a coherent and original body of work. Spatialism was primarily a question of how artworks are perceived. The aim of the movement was to definitively transcend the surface of the canvas for a perceptual experience that definitively engages Space. Hence, the use of electronic technical devices, used for their ability to radiate energy, or the use of gestural techniques, such as holes or cuts, to break through the surface of the work and invade it with the accidentality of reality. Another focus of interest in Liccardo's subjects can be traced back to Sergio Dangelo's "nuclear painting," the desire of a group of artists to reconstruct, on the medium of their artwork, a nuclear landscape. Thus, drawing on spatialist poetics regarding the perception of energies in the atmosphere, nuclear artists like Sergio Dangelo focused their attention on the existence and movement of atomic particles. Ernesto Liccardo's work stems from the same assumptions, but focuses his interest on clones and stem cells.

This work is typical of Ernesto Liccardo's more recent production, which consistently features globular forms inspired by the world of cellular reproduction and the biological processes of cloning. Liccardo's cells appear smooth and compact, and in this specific work, they enter a real dimension. Indeed, drawing on spatialist theories, the relief work directly engages the viewer's space, but these theories are somewhat reversal, as the concave shape of the globules predisposes the work itself to embrace real space. The rest of the work is characterized by a deep red chromatic application, using a gestural technique that clearly draws on an expressionist and abstract language.

Ernesto Liccardo was born in Naples in 1954 and lives and works in Isernia. He painted his first canvases inspired by the great masters of the 20th century, and later, in the 1970s, by the American Pop Art movement ("Effects of Convention," 1968 – oil on canvas). In the 1980s, he pursued a complex exploration of materials, aiming to achieve a "subjectivity" of things, which coincided with an important encounter with Alberto Burri in his studio in Città di Castello. His first work ("Primula," 1983 – mixed media) was created using scrap materials combined with galvanized sheet metal, waxes, and pigments. Cloning and stem cells are now the main focus of his artistic research. He has exhibited in Italy in major cities: Bari, Caserta, Naples, Isernia, Campobasso, Rome, Florence, Bologna, and Milan, and abroad: London, Paris, Athens, Vienna, Luxembourg, Palma de Mallorca, and Hong Kong.

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