Enzo Cucchi
Enzo Cucchi approached painting as a self-taught artist. From the very beginning his work imposed itself for originality compared to the predominant tendencies at the end of the Seventies. His are installations of the most diverse materials, freely located in the exhibition space, but used as a support for the painted, sculpted or drawn image. He exhibited in many Italian galleries, in particular at Emilio Mazzoli in Modena (since 1979), and Gian Enzo Sperone in Rome and New York (from 1981 to 1985). He is often present with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino, the protagonists of that new Italian current that the critic Achille Bonito Oliva calls Transavanguardia, in exhibitions organized by the main international museums, from the Kunsthalle in Basel (1980) to the Guggenheim Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1982), at the Tate Gallery in London (1983), at the Museum Würth in Künzelsau (Germany, 1998) and at the most important exhibitions such as the XXXIX Venice Biennale and the XI Paris Biennale (1980), Westkunst in Cologne (1981), the IV Sydney Biennale, Documenta 7 in Kassel and Zeitgeist in Berlin (1982).Since the beginning of the 1980s he has also been recognized abroad. He collaborated with many important galleries, in particular with Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich (since 1981), and also with Mary Boone-Michael Werner in New York (1984), Bernd Klüser in Munich (1985-1992), who published most of Cucchi’s artist books, Daniel Templon in Paris (1985), Marlborough Gallery in New York (1988), Akira Ikeda Gallery in Tokyo (1984 and 1989), Blum Helman in New York (1994), Galerie Raab in Berlin, Pièce Unique in Paris (1995), Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York (1997). Several prestigious museums have dedicated solo exhibitions to him, including the Kunsthaus in Zurich (1982 and 1988), the Caja de Pensiones in Madrid (1985), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1986), the Artist Information Project Information Lenbachhaus in Munich (1987), the Wiener Secession in Vienna (1988), the Museo Luigi Pecci in Prato (1989) and the Galleria Civica in Modena (1990), the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Fundaciò Joan Mirò in Barcelona and the Carrè d’Art in Nîmes (1991).
