Luigi Zuccheri
Luigi Zuccheri (b. 1904, Gemona del Friuli; d. 1974, Venice) channeled the painting traditions of the Veneto and Friuli regions into still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and animal scenes that addressed the dominant presence of nature in rural Italian life. Initially trained in oil by Venetian artists Alessandro Milesi and Umberto Martina, Zuccheri began around 1940 to work with tempera, a medium associated with the Italian Old Masters, making his own pigments from stones collected from local riverbanks. In the aftermath of World War II, the artist, who was a fugitive during the violent two-year Nazi occupation of Northern Italy, began to paint humans as dwarfed by the flora and fauna native to their environment. His mature paintings depict landscapes with foregrounds occupied by anachronistically large birds, frogs, insects, marmots, rabbits, and other creatures in a characteristically subdued, earth-toned palette. Like his friend Giorgio de Chirico, with whom he shared the secrets of tempera painting, and the other Italian Metaphysical painters, Zuccheri’s theatrical compositions estrange the everyday through shifts in scale. One of the twentieth century’s great animaliers, the artist toed the line of the surreal while remaining devoted to naturalistically capturing the wonders of his region.
Zuccheri was well-known and widely exhibited in Italy during his lifetime, including at the 1950 Venice Biennale. Posthumous solo exhibitions have been held at Karma, Los Angeles and New York (2024); STANDARD (OSLO) (2023), and in Italy at MMXX, Milan (2020); Museo Civico d’Arte, Pordenone (2014); Musei Civici di Treviso, (2007); Museo di Montefalco, (1982); and Galleria del Girasole, Udine (1975).
Luigi Zuccheri, Venice, 1949. Photograph by Graziano Arici. © Archivio Arici
Born 1904, Gemona del Friuli
Died 1974, Venice
Solo Exhibitions
2024
Karma, New York
Karma, Los Angeles
2023
Standard Oslo, Luigi Zuccheri
2020
MMXX, Milan, Luigi Zuccheri
2014
Museo Civico d’Arte, Pordenone, Italy, Saint Francis and Saint Catherine in the Art of Luigi Zuccheri
2007
Musei Civici Treviso, Treviso, Italy, Zuccheri In Treviso: Painting Exhibition
1982
Museo di Montefalco, Montefalco, Italy, Luigi Zuccheri (1904-1974): Comune di Pordenone Retrospective Exhibition
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
Edizioni Galleria Periferia, Lucerne, Switzerland, ANIMALI
70 Main Street, Thomaston, Maine, A Particular Kind of Heaven
2023
Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, Nature humaine – Humaine Nature
2022
Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles, Arles, France, Humane Nature
1973
Palace Doria, Genoa, Graphics Collective
1970
Palace Reale, Milan, Quarta Mostra Italiana del Dolore Innocente
1971
V National Exhibition, Arezzo, Italy, “Italia Bianco e Nero”
IV International, Camaiore, Italy Ai Frati
International Figurative Arts Exhibition, Rome, Free World
1969
Vittorio Veneto, Italy, Homage Exhibition of Italian Art to the City of Vittorio Veneto
1968
II National Exhibition, Arezzo, Italy, “Italia Bianco e Nero“
International Graphic Art Exhibition, Ancona, Italy
National Biennial of Contemporary Art, Caorle, Italy
1967
XXV National Art Biennial, Milan, Society of Fine Arts and Permanent Exhibition
1965
Museo della Permanente, Milan
1964
Biennial, Trento, Italy, Exhibition of Venetian Artists
1963-1964
St. Mark’s Square Museum, Venice
1961
St. Mark’s Square Museum, Venice, Venetian Artists and Writers
Church of San Vidal, Venice, Venetian Painters
1959
XIII Triveneta Art Biennial, Padua
1951
IX Triveneta Art Biennial, Padua
1950
XXV Venice Biennale, Venice
1949
Palazzo dell’Arengario, Milan, National Exhibition: Natale dell’arte
AWARDS
1952
Scuola di Burano Award, Venice
