Lorenzo Bonechi (Figline Valdarno, Florence, Italy, 1955 – 1994)

Lorenzo Bonechi was born in Figline Valdarno on April 12, 1955. He began dedicating himself to painting at the end of the 1960s, enrolling in 1969 at the Liceo Artistico Leon Battista Alberti in Florence. He lived with his family, his parents Maria and Antonio, his brother Marco, also a painter, his brother Gabriele, and his sister Cristina, in Figline Valdarno. He remained deeply connected to Tuscany, his homeland, throughout his short life. Lorenzo’s early education took place against the backdrop of the significant social and cultural transformations occurring in Italy at the time, shaped by values of social, moral, and pedagogical commitment, all marked by a strong ethical imprint. In 1971, he embarked on a formative journey with his brother Gabriele, traveling to Turin to visit the Museo Egizio, then to Milan to explore the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, where he discovered Fausto Melotti. They then travelled to Venice, where he encountered the Byzantine cathedral, the Museo Correr, the Guggenheim Collection, and, finally, to Verona, where he saw the bronze door of San Zeno cathedral and visited the Museo di Castelvecchio. From childhood, Lorenzo was involved in the scout movement, and by the early 1970s, he became an educator, organizing activities and performances. During this time, his interest in Native American culture grew, particularly regarding its relationship with the natural world and a profound sense of spirituality. The mythology of Native Americans, as recounted in Black Elk Speaks, the memoirs of the old Sioux shaman, fed an imaginative world that Lorenzo integrated with the customs and landscapes of the Valdarno area. This rural environment remained largely untouched during those years. To the sacred authenticity of North American peoples, he connected his own cultural origins rooted in Christianity, deepening his studies of the Bible and Saint Augustine’s Confessions The visions he encountered provided him with essential imagery: from Etruscan art to Romanesque churches, to the farmhouse landscapes of Tuscany, dotted with medieval villages and castles. These reflections were recorded in one of the many notebooks that accompanied the artist throughout his journey, where he sketched and wrote down everything that caught his interest, ancient art, avant-garde movements, places, as well as literary and musical sources. In 1974 Lorenzo took a studio in Figline Valdarno, and in the same year, he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze. He attended the academy intermittently, between the Sculpture School of Quinto Ghermandi and the Painting School of Silvio Loffredo, also taking lessons in art history at the University of Florence, including courses by Carlo Del Bravo. In 1979 he held his first solo exhibition of painting and graphics, organized with the help of his brother Gabriele at the Palazzo Pretorio in Figline Valdarno. The exhibition was introduced by an essay by Elisabetta Ermini, who, a few years later, introduced him to Massimo Lippi, a poet and sculptor from Siena. This period marked the beginning of an inner crisis, which led to a feverish production of works, mainly drawings, watercolours, and paintings. This intense phase of creative growth ultimately paved the way for his individual artistic breakthrough and the beginning of his career in the 1980s.

From 1981 Lorenzo collaborated with the Calcografica Studio run by brothers Piergiuseppe, Dino, and Valerio Carini in San Giovanni Valdarno, forging with them a professional and personal bond that had already begun in the late 1970s, particularly with Dino Carini, grounded in mutual esteem and shared intellectual exchange. That same year he visited two major exhibitions: Paul Klee in Florence and Alberto Savinio in Fiesole. He also travelled to Sicily with his brother Gabriele, a journey that proved equally significant for the epiphanic experience he describes in his notebook of that year, in the Duomo di Monreale and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. There, for the first time, he perceived with particular intensity the equilibrium between figuration and geometry: between the upper sections adorned with mosaics depicting sacred scenes and the lower sections enriched by intricate opus sectile geometric patterns. Lorenzo’s works began to yield figurative outcomes developed through the study of the Old Masters and twentieth-century artists, leading to a maturation of line, the construction of volume through light, and a decisive, forceful gesturality marked by vortex-like strokes. His subjects drew from mythology and from narratives of the Old and New Testaments as Giona/Jonah, La partenza di Abramo/The departure of Abraham, Lazzaro/Lazarus, the Crocifissione/Crucifixion, San Galgano/Saint Galgano and the figure of the Angelo/Angel. Figures in motion or immersed within landscapes and architectural settings emerge as central elements of the artist’s inner experience, elaborated and restituted through direct observation aided by photography, and further deepened through a lot of drawing studies. In the autumn of 1982 he travelled to Rome with his first large-scale drawings to present to the gallerist Gian Enzo Sperone, who acquired works by the young artist. In 1983 he made his debut on the contemporary art scene, entering a period of intense artistic ferment marked not only by the affirmation of the Transavanguardia, but also by Anachronism and Pittura Colta, phenomena driven by a renewed reflection on tradition and on the role of contemporary practice in relation to history. Through his collaboration with the Stamperia Carini, Lorenzo was able to obtain a studio in San Giovanni Valdarno, where he worked on paintings such as La via di Damasco/The road to Damascus and met artists including Carlo Maria Mariani, Roberto Barni, and Carlo Bertocci. He came into direct contact with leading critics such as Maurizio Calvesi and Italo Tomassoni, and in June 1983 participated in the exhibition Il tempo dell’immagine. He was included within the postmodern phenomenon theorized by critic Italo Mussa and documented in the publication of the essay La Pittura Colta. In October he took part, together with the aforementioned artists, in the group exhibition Picturae, curated by Maria Luisa Frisa at Palazzo Novellucci in Prato, and in January 1984 participated in Il Riso dell’Universo, also curated by Maria Luisa Frisa with a text by Maurizio Calvesi, at Casa Masaccio in San Giovanni Valdarno. He held a solo exhibition at ABC Fine Art Gallery in London and, in June, participated in the group exhibition Anachronism, Hypermanierism, “Pittura Colta” at the Edward Totah Gallery, as well as in New Prints and Drawings at the Tate Gallery, which brought together the acquisition of a group of his engravings. He also presented a solo exhibition at the Carlsson Gallery in Göteborg. He met art historians Moreno Bucci and Carl Brandon Strehlke, establishing with them a dialogue of critical exchange and a lasting friendship that would also lead to encounters with art historians Fausto Calderai and Lucia Meoni. In the same year, he met Stefania, who would remain his partner for the rest of his life. From November 1984 to January 1985, the painting La via di Damasco/The road to Damascus was included in the exhibition Metaphor and/or Symbol. A Perspective on Contemporary Art between the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, which acquired the work, and the National Museum of Art in Osaka.

1985 was the year of the solo exhibition at the Galleria Carini in Florence, the Fabian Carlsson Gallery in London, and the Sharpe Gallery in New York. On this occasion, two catalogues were published featuring works from the previous two years, accompanied by critical essays by Franco Rella and Carl Brandon Strehlke. This period is characterized by the production of large-scale works that make visible the gestural line translated into painting and that establish central subjects in the artist’s oeuvre: figures of men and women emerging from the landscape, as in Corteo/Procession; the exploration of spiritual places, as in Tempio/Temple; the four mixed-media panels of the Visitazione/Visitation and the pastel L’angelo e Giacobbe/The angel and Jacob; the oil paintings La caccia al cervo/The deer hunt and the Crocifissione/Crucifixion, exhibited at the Sharpe Gallery in New York, after which Lorenzo created a bronze sculpture on the same subject for the first time; and the Conversazione/Conversation later acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Gifu, the first work with this title in a series that would continue in subsequent works. In June 1985 he participated in the International Contemporary Art Fair in London with the Galleria Carini, and in July he took part in Anniottanta, curated by Renato Barilli, at the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. The painting Cristo e Adamo/Christ and Adam, depicting a crucifixion, was featured on the cover of Flash Art in November 1985. Additionally, he was included in the exhibition A New Romanticism – Sixteen Artists from Italy, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and the Akron Art Museum, running from October 1985 to April 1986, alongside artists such as Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Mimmo Paladino, and Gino De Dominicis. In 1986, writings on his work appeared in journals such as Art News, by Eleanor Heartney, and in Art Forum by poet and critic John Yau. In May, he participated in La memoria del tempo curated by Maurizio Calvesi at the Verona fair, and in Arte Santa curated by Achille Bonito Oliva at the Loggetta Lombardesca in Ravenna. This was followed by Sogno Italiano. La collezione Franchetti a Roma and Italiana 1950-1986 at Cimal Internacional in València, curated by the critic of the Transavanguardia movement. In June Lorenzo took part in the XI Quadriennale and was included in Giuseppe Gatt’s publication La nuova maniera italiana. His works were also exhibited in Contemporary Prints at the Tate Gallery in London, and in A Painterly Approach at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art in Sunderland. In October he participated in the group exhibition Artitalia at Di Laurenti Gallery, New York. The year 1986 marked a significant turning point in his stylistic development: he abandoned the gestural, vortex-like brushstroke and the earthy palette in favor of a study of pure colour, applying flat areas of pigment in search of the essence of form. He deepened his study of Byzantine art and Russian icon painters such as Andrei Rublev, while nurturing a great passion for his compatriots Masaccio and Masolino, Guido da Siena, Duccio, Sassetta, Giovanni di Paolo, the Master of Figline, Paolo Uccello, and Fra Angelico. Between 1986 and 1987, the painting cycle Città Celeste/Celestial City emerged: the subject of architecture, long present in his work, reached a fully personal geometric elaboration, inspired by the interpretation of the Apocalypse of Saint John and the depiction of the city of Jerusalem. These are colour combinations arranged to form portals, walls, and towers interspersed with dunes and trees, characterized by the search for sonic harmonies, touched by the signature that envelops the colour.

In February 1987 Lorenzo held a solo exhibition with Galleria Carini at the Forum Internationale Kunstmesse in Zurich, followed by his participation in the VIII Biennale Nazionale d’Arte Contemporanea di Piacenza, hosted at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi. During the summer of 1987 he went on his honeymoon with Stefania to the Greek islands and to Athens, deepening his research into the origins of classical and Byzantine art, as well as into the essential architectures of Cycladic churches, such as those of Santorini and Patmos, which evoke the conception of harmony of the Città Celeste/Celestial City. In September he took part in the exhibition Il colore dei miracoli, curated by Luciano Pistoi, presenting the painting Convivio/Banquet and the bronze sculpture Figura/Figure, in polychrome enamel later removed in order to emphasize the materiality of the bronze. Catalogue texts were written by Renato Barilli, Achille Bonito Oliva, and Saverio Vertone. The exhibition featured works by young artists such as Stefano Arienti and his friend and sculptor Athos Ongaro, alongside more historically established figures such as Tullio Garbari and Pompeo Borra, whose work particularly attracted his interest. He would later study Pompeo Borra’s oeuvre more closely through his friendship with Carlo Cattelani, a gallerist and collector based in Modena. During this period, the conversations and elongated figures in his paintings acquire a metaphysical tension and a hieratic stance that retrace the origins of the Greek kouros through to the School of Novgorod. The faces draw their expressions from medieval maestà, and the artist reflects on the gold grounds of early panel paintings, seeking a material equivalent in the colour yellow, juxtaposed with other primary and secondary hues. His working process becomes slow and meticulous, developing autonomously and originally with respect to its sources of inspiration. The study of subjects begins with pencil studies, followed by extremely fine tempera works on paper in which composition and tonalities are calibrated, and finally by their translation, through a grid system, into large-format oil paintings. From September 1987 to 1988, one of his works was included in the exhibition Self, Memory and Desire. New Romanticism in Italian Painting, curated by Italo Mussa and held at Australian museum institutions. In April 1988 he participated in the group exhibition Fables and Fantasies, at the Duke University Museum of Art in Durham, as well as in New Art on Paper featuring recent acquisitions of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. That same year he worked on the sculptural installation Città Celeste/Celestial City consisting of a wool carpet whose borders depict the specific architectural motif and whose center is occupied by an expansive blue field with a yellow circle, within which stands the tree of life in gilded bronze. In February 1989 he held a solo exhibition at Galleria Carini in Florence, accompanied by a catalogue published and designed in collaboration with the Carini brothers, with a text by Michele Ranchetti, scholar of theology and church history. The publication includes works such as the faces entitled Figura/Figure and details of rocks or mountains with vegetal elements under the title Paesaggio/Landscape, together with photographs taken by the artist and a graphic composition presenting a series of place names dear to him, centered around the drawing of a Byzantine altar. In July Lorenzo presented a solo exhibition at the Sala Capitolare of the Pieve di Cascia in Reggello, accompanied by a text by Ernesto Balducci. In 1989, he moved his studio to Figline Valdarno, into spaces within a sixteenth-century complex adjacent to the Sanctuary of Santa Maria a Ponterosso. The works of this two-year period focus on the idea of copying and imitation as the enactment of a model, drawn from the impersonality of the painter within the Byzantine method, which privileges the evocative power of the image. Works such as Giardino/Garden, Paesaggio/Landscape, La Verna, Resurrezione/Resurrection emerge from this approach. In 1990 he also worked on the bronze sculpture Bambino benedicente/Blessing Child, drawing on the iconographic models of early fifteenth-century sculpture by Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, and Mino da Fiesole. This phase of research culminated in the 1991 solo exhibition at Galerie Hilger in Vienna, which led to the acquisition of a group of drawings by the Albertina Museum. The catalogue text was written by Friedhelm Mennekes. This transitional moment maintains a rigorous attention to the canons of medieval painting and leads to a form of purification through the synthesis of form, concentrating a minute pictorial practice and refined gestural precision, necessary to articulate a new trajectory of values in the final two years of the artist’s activity.

In 1991, a video documented a meeting at his studio in Figline Valdarno with art historians Giovanna Uzzani and Mauro Pratesi, who were visiting with students from the Istituto d’arte di Firenze. Lorenzo expresses the essence of the works present in the atelier and the attractions that drive his research: «A kind of proximity, between certain aspects of Tuscan painting from the 14th and early 15th centuries and the feelings I have had since childhood, this kind of interpenetration». From 1992 onwards, his painting enters a phase characterized by a renewed naturalness in representation, reaching a level of mature execution and an expression of high moral values. Figures are set within the landscape, the brushwork becomes gestural and vibrant, outlining mountain reliefs, trees, and skies streaked with clouds. Study from direct observation is conveyed through countless photographic shots and preparatory drawings, with garments for the figures being custom-made and worn in poses, in order to closely examine folds and volumes, painted with shifting tones in works such as La pergola/The pergola and Conversazione/Conversation. At the same time, the figurative path of the Città Celeste/Celestial City continues, reaching an extreme formal synthesis, a careful study of colour pairings, and a geometric construction that the artist enthusiastically traces in the wall patterns of Roman painting from Pompeii. The design of sculptural works within spatial contexts has always accompanied his research and the ideas he captured in his sketchbooks and on paper. In 1991, he collaborated with architect Adolfo Natalini on an unrealized project that would have placed one of his sculptures alongside one by Roberto Barni in the square of San Giovanni Valdarno. Around this time, he met and formed a friendship with the Dutch artists and sculptors Thom Puckey and Elisabet Stienstra. In 1993, he worked on two bronze sculptures, Tempietto/Little temple and San Michele/Saint Michael, the result of extensive compositional research and studies on paper. He also reinterpreted the subject of the Bambino benedicente/Blessing Child in egg tempera on panel, with a carved wooden frame and gold leaf. The same year, he painted the Bagnanti/Bathers, set in a water mirror of the Ciuffenna stream in the Gorgiti area, at the foot of the Pratomagno mountains, a place the artist cherished and often visited. From 1992, he began collaborating with Gian Enzo Sperone, and in November 1993, he held a solo exhibition at Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York, where he presented, among other works, the sculptures Tempietto/Little temple, San Michele/Saint Michael, the paintings Città Celeste/Celestial City, Bambino benedicente/Blessing Child and Figure/Figures.

In 1994, Lorenzo began painting a series of temperas on paper, including Conversazione/Conversation, San Giovanni Battista/Saint John the Baptist, L’angelo e Giacobbe/The angel and Jacob, La via di Damasco/The road to Damascus. The latter two subjects are revisited ten years after his first large-scale works on the same themes. At the same time, he worked with thin pastels and tempera on medium-sized paper, resolving the painting through the authority of drawing, in subjects such as Figura/Figure, Giardino/Garden, San Francesco/Saint Francis. In June 1994, he held a solo exhibition at Domestica, the art gallery in San Giovanni Valdarno run by Valerio and Dino Carini, where he presented the Città Celeste/Celestial City, composed of six temperas on paper. From this series, the eponymous silkscreen portfolio was produced at Stamperia Carini. The catalogue text, titled Materia sottilissima, was written by Dino Carini. In September, he participated in the exhibition Il paese delle meraviglie e Le tavole della legge at the Castello di Volpaia, where he met the artist Salvo, who also exhibited in the show. He took part in the group exhibition 40×40 at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano. In the same year, he donated a significant group of works on paper to the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi of Florence. He was invited to participate in the Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia by curator Jean Clair. On November 21, his son Giovanni was born, and on November 23, 1994, Lorenzo Bonechi died in his sleep at the age of 39. In 1995, two rooms in the Padiglione Italiano of the Biennale di Venezia. 46. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte were dedicated to him. The catalogue text, written by Rainer Crone, states: «Bonechi, born in 1955 in Figline Valdarno, lived and worked in a small town where the strict laws of Renaissance geometry impart an evident urban beauty. Admiration and respect for his work had, just before his death, made a great leap, establishing themselves even in New York [...]. According to Bonechi, at the heart of his work was the sacredness of images. The themes, forms, figures, and architectures that populate his paintings refer to distant models, such as Byzantine icons and the Italian Renaissance. It was not the religiosity of the images that was his theme – the artist claimed – but rather to awaken in the paintings a form of sacredness similar to that encountered in the work of some great masters of ancient painting.» Following his death, written tributes were contributed by friends such as Roberto Barni and Francesco Bonami. In 1996, the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi of Florence dedicated a monographic exhibition to him, curated by Giovanni Agosti, featuring drawings, engravings, and photographs donated by the artist during his lifetime and by his wife, brothers, friends Lucia Meoni and Moreno Bucci, and Stamperia Carini after his passing. In 1997, the first posthumous international exhibition was held at the Centre Cultural la Beneficència in València, curated by Carles D. Marco. On the tenth anniversary of his death, the exhibition Lorenzo Bonechi. 1955-1994. Pittore di luce, was organized at the Palazzo Pretorio in Figline Valdarno and the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, curated by Moreno Bucci and Carl Brandon Strehlke. Subsequent exhibitions, publications, and initiatives have aimed to promote the artist’s work, alongside the preservation and enhancement of the Archivio Lorenzo Bonechi.