Caravaggio's last heir on display in Urbino

Until June 27, 2021, the rooms of the Castellare of the Ducal Palace in Urbino are hosting the exhibition Luciano Ventrone. The Painter of Hyperbole, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi.

Forty-five works by the recently deceased artist, a master of virtuosity capable of breaking down forms to reconstruct, are on display. Ventrone starts from photography to reach theabstraction of the subject: working directly on photography, he captures those details not visible to the human eye that create wonder in the observer. In his works he creates evocative worlds, charged with experience and emotion. His choice of subjects links him to great painters of the past (he has been called the last heir of Caravaggio), but his attention to the application of paint, color and light place him among the great contemporary artists.

Among the most internationally known Italian artists, he has exhibited in the most important museums and galleries around the world.

Critic Federico Zeri defined Ventrone’s still lifes with these words, “Described with even exasperated lucidity, his vegetables are defined by a skillfully violent light, which is not of an August sun, but rather that of the studios where the cinematographic image is made. His still lifes are presented to us as motionless moments of an affair that lies between an antecedent and a future, as instants, suspended and incandescent, of an objective reality defined, until it is devoured, by a relentless, almost sidereal light, against dark backgrounds of astral or lunar evocation from satellite or planet. Luciano Ventrone’s painting is a continuous optical discovery, an incessant recovery of objective reality, which re-emerges after the flood of abstract forms, cerebral ligogryphs, ’material lumps’ and gestural writings.”

“Luciano Ventrone is a contemporary artist who makes works that people come to see because they want to wonder,” said curator Vittorio Sgarbi. “He has been able to establish himself as a great master in figuration, with exceptional virtuosity. The artist seems to seek an absolute, an essence, which, in the work, augments reality, not just reproduces it. It is more. Ventrone is the painter of hyperbole. And hyperbolic, exaggerated, baroque precisely, are his works, rather than hyperrealistic. A great illusion.”

The exhibition is sponsored by the City of Urbino and is a project of Contemplazioni, in collaboration with the Archivio Luciano Ventrone, with general coordination by Gianluca Bellucci.

For info: www.vieniaurbino.it

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with free admission.

Image: Luciano Ventrone, Fantastic Dialogue (80 x 100 cm).

Caravaggio's last heir on display in Urbino

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