Puglisi Lorenzo

Lorenzo Puglisi lives and works in Bologna. His pictorial research stems from observation and admiration for the greatest masterpieces in the history of Western art. From the Sistine Chapel to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, from Caravaggio to Correggio, from Tintoretto to Rembrandt, Rubens, and Goya, faces, poses, and hands are selected by the artist's eye and transferred to canvases, painted in monochrome black with quick, thick brushstrokes, where the predominant use of white is illuminated by flashes of red or blue. These fragments of faces and body parts, captured in an expression or gesture, are not a lack or a progressive negation: on the contrary, they are to be understood as apparitions that, emerging from the darkness, manage to impose themselves upon it, presenting themselves to us at the exact moment of their definition in real form, at the moment in which they find their essence. It's no coincidence that the body parts the artist extrapolates and reproduces on canvas are almost always heads, faces, and hands: it is here that the essence and expressive capacity of a human being is concentrated, in their thoughts and in their gestures; it is here that their interiority is expressed.

Thus, in his famous self-portrait (titled with the date it was completed in the studio), Puglisi reveals only his face and his clasped hands: the body parts that, in the artist's words, best embody a person's vital energy, their inexorable striving toward life, in contrast to the dark substance from which it emerges. The repeated and overlapping lines are a metaphor for the artist's incessant flow of emotions and thoughts as he interacts with others. In a historical moment burdened worldwide by military conflicts and pandemic dramas, with his passionate and relentless research, Puglisi intends to offer us, through his painting, a message of hope and positivity.

The Self-Portrait was donated by the artist to the Uffizi Galleries in 2022.