Lorenzo Mattotti
Lorenzo Mattotti, Sovay Giugno, 2009
Crayon and pastel on paper, 22.00 x 18.00 inches
Lorenzo Mattotti: Stanze Intime
November 18, 2021 - February 26th, 2022
Philippe Labaune Gallery is pleased to present Stanze Intime, a solo exhibition presented in collaboration with Galerie Martel of new and recent paintings and drawings by Paris-based Italian artist Lorenzo Mattotti. His award-winning illustrations have graced children’s books, the Louis Vuitton Travel Book: Vietnam, and over thirty covers of The New Yorker. This is the first gallery exhibition for the artist in the United States. Stanze Intime will be on view from November 18, 2021 – February 26th, 2022.
Known to work in oil pastel and acrylics, Mattotti frequently evokes figures and landscapes, often saturated in vibrant color, to dance and sway in tender courtships. Inspired early on by Latin American Expressionism, Mattotti executes his work with an emphasis on color and line and what tension, or energy, can manifest. As he visually explores the natural and human landscape, themes of intimacy, unrequited love, and isolation are brought to the forefront.
Lorenzo Mattotti, La Ragazza Che Sogna, 2021
Acrylic on canvas, 57.50 x 57.50 inches
Among the works on view will be a selection of paintings and drawings completed in 2021. This work marks a period where the artist was enabled to immerse himself in the studio and focus on larger canvases. Within his painting, Sotto la Piogga (Under the Rain), a contemplative scene which the artist revisits in his paintings often, depicts two figures standing at an overlook of verdant green. Simultaneously the viewer can feel the closeness between the figures and the expansiveness before them. During this exploratory time in the studio, Mattotti continued to focus on the human spirit, as seen in the energetic painting Estasi. Executed in acrylic, two bodies in emphatic poses contort in a colorful dance.
Also on view are a collection of small and vibrant drawings, Stanze Intime 1-5, whose layers of color pencil instill quiet currents of energy to couples in various embraces. As a spirited counterpoint, a selection of works from Mattotti’s Rituali Intimi series will also be shown. Here, various abstracted figures engage with each other in colorful dreamscapes.
Lorenzo Mattotti, New Yorker Cover (Cover for The New Yorker Magazine, September 2006), 2006
Crayon and pastel on paper, 25.50 x 20.00 inches
Lorenzo Mattotti was born in Brescia, Italy, in 1954. He studied at the Faculty of Architecture in Venice before beginning a career in comics. In Milan during the late 1970s, he began creating black and white comic strips that were initially published in counterculture magazines, Eureka, Gong, and King Kong. The release of his 1984 comic book, Fuochi/Fires garnered Mattotti international recognition for his idiosyncratic style and his use of pastel and color pencil, giving each page a quality of completeness. Mattotti was a frequent collaborator with Françoise Mouly and her husband Art Spiegelman for their 1980s underground comic series, Raw. Mattotti’s illustrations have been published in The New Yorker, Vogue, and the Louis Vuitton Travel Book: Vietnam. In 2003, he received a prestigious Eisner Award for the graphic novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Within the same year, his collaboration with renowned musician Lou Reed was released, The Raven- a visual and poetic interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem. In 2015, Mattotti collaborated with writer Neil Gaiman on the black and white graphic novel Hansel and Gretel. In 2019, he released his first animated feature, The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily. Mattotti has held over forty solo exhibitions including: Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy; Fonds Helene et Edouard Leclerc, Landerneau, France; Musei di Porta Romana, Milan, Italy; Villa Manin, Passariano, Italy; and the Cartoonmuseum Basel, Switzerland, among others. With Galerie Martel he has exhibited at Drawing Now and Art Paris Art Fair. He lives and works in Paris.
About Philippe Labaune
Gallery Founded in 2021, Philippe Labaune Gallery is devoted to championing and presenting original 20th and 21st-century comic art and illustrations by emerging and established artists from around the world.
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