93
Gianni Pisani (1935 - 2022)
Il compleanno, 2000
Signed and dated G.Pisani 2000 lower right
Mixed media diptych on canvas
187x187 cm (each canvas), 187x374 cm (overall work)
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Born in Naples in 1935, Gianni Pisani began his artistic career at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples as a student of Maestro Emilio Notte. He received his first artistic recognition at a young age: at the age of twenty, in 1955, he won the Prize at the National Exhibition of the Academies of Fine Arts and the Cesenatico Prize with the work "Crucifixion", created on fabric, which started an experiment on multiplicity of media that would characterize all his subsequent research. In 1960 he approached the international trends between New Dada and object art, and then approached Pop Art in the 1970s.
In 1984, after teaching in Milan, he returned to Naples, first teaching and then becoming director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, a position he held for 14 years. He has worked on several projects in collaboration with some of the most influential personalities of Italian contemporary art, such as Gillo Dorfles and Lucio Amelio. In Italy he participated three times in the Rome Quadrennial and in the 46th Venice Art Biennale. In 1999 a large solo exhibition was dedicated to him at the Palazzo Reale in Naples, in 2003 at Castel Dell'Ovo and in 2016 at the Palazzo delle Arti in Naples. His works are preserved in many public collections in the city, in Castel Sant'Elmo, at the Capodimonte Museum and at the Madre. One of his works, The train that leaves from the island, is installed outside the Salvator Rosa station of the Naples Metro.