Piero Guccione - The Shadow of Summer

Landscape has always been a central theme in artistic research, both as a setting, as a backdrop, and as a subject itself. The naturalistic depiction of landscape has been a major aspiration for artists of every era. Each historical period has offered its own interpretation of landscape, contributing to the evolution of its depiction: first with an exploration of space, through Brunelleschi's perspective in the early Renaissance; then with atmospheric rendering in the sixteenth century; and finally with the depiction of every single vibration of light on objects in Impressionism. Piero Guccione's conception of landscape is extremely complex and unique. His vision of the world is essentially realist, yet he focuses his gaze on those details that, even within reality, can create a metaphysical sense of enigma and estrangement. These are details that cause slight perceptual shifts in a general sense of mysterious expectation, which would otherwise go unnoticed by the superficial eye of a mere spectator. It is up to the artist to uncover them and highlight them in his works. The work in question is part of a trilogy of Sicilian rural landscapes executed in pastel on paper and designed to illustrate the masterpiece The Leopard (the work from which the illustrations in the 1988 American edition of Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel were derived). These illustrations were used to create 150 lithographs, created the year after the novel's publication, in 1989; the original work was created in 1987. The lithograph bears the artist's original signature (in pencil), and this copy is number 1 of 150.

This work is highly representative of the artistic vision of Sicilian painter Piero Guccione. The aim of his art is to identify contradictions within a real dimension, small shifts in perception that give reality a different contextualization, opening glimpses of a sense of magic and metaphysics. Thus, in this work, the rendering of a banal glimpse of the countryside is transformed into a complex vision, the fruit of the artist's inner gaze. Guccione, in fact, manages to capture within the representation a contradictory, extremely fleeting, almost ineffable, perceptive moment that his unconscious has recorded and elaborated into a visionary rendering. Thus, the images overlap in a delicate and refined game of illusion. Piero Guccione achieves this result thanks to his extraordinary technique, through which the images appear blurred, in constant motion, almost elusive, aiming to reflect in his work the complexity of human perception. The atmosphere of mystery is also fueled by the rationality that dominates the composition and an extraordinary purity of color.

Piero Guccione was born in Scicli in 1935 and passed away in Modica in 2018. He studied at the Art School in Catania and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Together with painters Attardi, Calabria, Farulli, Giaquinto, and Vespignani, he was part of the "Il pro e il contro" group from 1962 to 1964, whose research focused on a new contextualization of realist poetics. He was initially an assistant to Renato Guttuso at the Academy of Rome, and in 1979 he was appointed professor of painting at the Academy of Catania. Since then, he has lived in the countryside between Scicli and Modica, often staying in Sampieri, whose landscapes have inspired many of his seascapes. Piero Guccione has always enjoyed extraordinary public and critical acclaim, and has participated in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally. He has also participated in several of the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrennial. On December 14, 2004, Piero Guccione received the Gold Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic from Carlo Azeglio Ciampi as a deserving figure in art and culture.

The transaction takes place with maximum security for both the seller and the buyer. We take care of the conformity (provenance, authenticity, state of conservation) of the work and handle the shipping.
Returns are possible no later than 14 days after receiving the order.