Galleria Nazionale D'arte Moderna: Leoncillo Leonardi

Leonardo Leoncilli

In the Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Moderna there are many rooms filled with real gems from paintings to conceptual works and I was happy to see that they had also included ceramics more specifically the work of the Italian artist Leonardo Leoncilli. I am interested in this particular artist not only because I work in ceramics myself but  for the wider scope and life he gave to a traditional method of working such as ceramics, he pushed it away from decorative  into the conceptual realm.

The work I saw in the Museum it's called: Bombardamento Notturno 1954 translated as Night Bombardment. It is of a large scale (I have never seen an abstract ceramic piece of such large scale before) is one of his best works and was shown at the Venice Biennale in 1954 the interesting part of it is that the artist made this ceramic piece of a mother protecting her child from the bombardments which are a realist image into a powerful abstract which is given by the large scale of the work of contorted clay figures combined with strong enamel colours, a metamorphosis of intertwined colours that expand upwards & around giving a sense of further space to the work. The structure itself with his roughness gives a sense of sheer life, torment and then death but also volume, physicality. He presents something you can not as a viewer simply walk away from both in the way the sculpture is made and in the concept he is presenting this is also due to the large scale and strong colours, you can't avoid it. The ceramic sculpture screams from every pore look at me you can't just walk away from what happened. Another powerful work is: La madre uccisa dai Tedeschi del 1944 translated as The Mother killed by the Germans he gives life to the figure by adding volume to the structure horizontally.

 

His initial works where realistic and had a natural feel to them but then he revolutionised them by deconstructing and breaking them, making them abstract as you can see below in Tempo Ferito II 1962 where the work intertwined there isn't a distinctive main figure.

It would have been interesting to see more of his work in the Galleria D'arte Moderna or indeed abroad I have never seen his work in England. His work made me think about how I make my own ceramics especially the scale of his art work. I could in the future work on a large scale in ceramics but that depends very much on space and in London I find that studio space is very hard to get due to high demand, lack of space and luck of funds so artists who are not wealthy can be limited on what they can produce if they live here and they don't have a specific commission running. This is I would say the negative  side of being an artist in London if one wants to do produce large sculptural or painting work it can be challenging to do, without a support network or basic funds as everything here is so expensive. So I am also working on a conceptual piece and with conceptual I can really use any area at my wish so that I can deal in  a positive way with external limitations while creating new work as it doesn't need a fixed place to be set up and I am not bound by external funds. Yes guerrilla conceptual art for me it's the way forward thought I will still make sculptures in ceramics and other materials.