About Oliviero Leonardi

Born into a family of master ceramicists, Oliviero Leonardi (1921 - 2019) was an Italian painter and sculptor based in Rome and Paris. He was largely recognized in the 1970/80s as one of the leader in painting with experimental materials on steel plates baked in oven at high fire (at 900 degrees Celsius). His artistic research focused, among others, on the subject of cosmogony. He was partially influenced by futurism, surrealism, cubism and art informel.

In the 1970s/80s, he had more than 25 collective and solo exhibitions in major art galleries in Italy, France, Spain, Monaco, Germany, and Luxembourg. He exhibited with a collective of artists, including Giorgio De Chirico, Salvador Dalí, and Joan Miró during the 1975 Contemporary Art Exhibition in Fiuggi, Italy. His work was also exhibited at the Maschio Angioino, the Centro di Cultura Italiana, the Saarland Museum, the Van Gogh House Museum and the Limoges Biennale, and commissioned for public spaces including the metro in the city of Rome and the Pan-American headquarters in New York.

Following two decades of successful exhibitions, Oliviero Leonardi detached from the world of art on his own, and slowly started creating art for himself from the 1990s until his passing few years ago. His efforts, art, beliefs, innovative art techniques, numerous exhibitions, ideas, friends, and critics, namely his work and art as a whole, were almost completely forgotten.

www.oliviero-leonardi.com

ARTIST STATEMENT

During his exploration phase on the island of Capri, Oliviero Leonardi discovered the potential of steel as an artistic medium. After Capri, he traveled to Florence, Venice, Palermo, Rovereto, and Ravenna to perfect his knowledge of the artistic forms. In a post-WWII context, he became passionate about studying the origin of our universe and, in the broader sense, human existence and condition.

His work captures the great scene of the world where the artist’s vision evolves to the heart of known and unknown spaces. The art of Oliviero Leonardi tells a sacred story, the origin, a primordial event that is created by firing colors on steel plates at high temperatures. Time is not a continuous concept in Oliviero Leonardi’s art. He looked into unraveling “memories of vanished entities of immemorial times”.

WAR IN THE DESERT, Painting on steel, 100x70 cm, c. 1982 © Oliviero Leonardi

INTERVIEW - 10 Questions with Jean Suhas on Oliviero Leonardi

Can you walk me through Oliviero Leonardi's artistic career? When and how did he emerge into the art scene, and how did his work evolve over time?

The first dated painting on steel was created in the year 1970, noting that the artistic path of Oliviero Leonardi began years before his artistic (material) work was visible. After the war, he spent several years in Capri, and he later traveled to various Italian cities known for their artistic tradition and spent his time studying both ancient and Avant-garde art, meditating on ideas about the life of art and different ways of making art (from rock to sand, from clay and glass to steel), and drawing inspiration from philosophy, especially Eastern philosophy, and mysticism.
In the 1970s, he was an active artist, had his own workshop, and worked and lived in Rome. Following several studio visits by the Rome art community and exhibitions at his art studio in Rome in the early 1970s, he continued with solo and collective shows throughout Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, including at the Galerie Drouant, Galerie des Arts Contemporains, Galleria La Tor Sanguigna, Galleria Sanvitale, Galleria Tavazzi, Van Gogh house, the Saarland museum, the Centro di Cultura Italiana and the Limoges Biennale.
In the 1990s, he left his art studio in Rome and moved to France with his lifelong partner. He had transported the entirety of his oeuvre with him and his workshop, including the ovens. Eventually, he began to produce fewer works and focused his later years on drawings, ceramics, and sculpture. His last works were produced after 2000.

What would you say are the most defining characteristics of Leonardi's artistic style? Were there any particular techniques or mediums he favored?

He was a very innovative artist. The medium he used has yet to be fully studied and described. He combined the knowledge of enameling, ceramics, and metalwork, literally baking his paintings in ovens at 900 degrees Celsius. He used fire to apply mixtures of volcanic ash, clay, stone, and other materials to steel plates, creating mixed-media paintings on steel. It was revolutionary at the time and still is.
The technique he used results in works of art that are indestructible. For an artist who was deeply interested in questions of cosmic order, cosmogonia, primordial and eternal life, it is very symptomatic that he used such materials and techniques. He stated in his exhibition materials: "My research is in the conquest of the pictorial medium, an immortal technique, like a new cosmic language to which to entrust the art that never dies."

ASTRONAUT FROM AN ICE PLANET, Painting on steel, 100x70 cm, c. 1981 © Oliviero Leonardi

DYNAMIC ABSTRACT, Painting on steel, 100x70 cm, c. 1985 © Oliviero Leonardi

Did Leonardi's work explore any specific themes or subjects repeatedly throughout his career? If so, what were they, and how did he approach them?

Yes, he was passionate about the themes of procreation, space, life forces, and, at the same time, the primordial.
He was preoccupied, like Borhes, for example, with questions of time-lapse, timelessness, eternal time, the discontinuity of time and space, and the idea that the future is the past and that life itself is not linear (in terms of time and space). In his work, he believed in life from the past, meeting life from the future, and questioning the illusion of the world as we know it. Several of his paintings include entities from the past in the context of the future, including mythological characters and ancient life.
Life and death are both possible and impossible for him. He is trying to capture the essence that is in between - how one comes from another. That is essentially the question of energy.

How did critics and the art community receive Leonardi's work during his lifetime? Did his reputation change over time?

His reputation changed over time due to his artistic absence in the last years of his life and partly because history often forgets and loses its people, only to find them again later. This happened to Oliviero Leonardi.
He was notorious in Italy and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, with some international experts writing about him (including Gustav René Hocke) and world-famous Italian critics (including Giulio Carlo Argan), with some importantpublic projects (like the panels for the metro in Rome or the Pan-American headquarters in New York). He was widely recognized within the European art communities. The archives count numerous papers and essays on the artist.
In the 1990s, as his life and work became more intimate, he was lost from the artistic scene and from art history. His art was almost completely forgotten. Until very recently, 40 years after his last exhibition, when his artistic creation and legacy were revisited, the Association Oliviero Leonardi was founded, and the process of recontextualization began.

ODYSSEY OF THE UNIVERSE, Painting on steel, 100x70 cm, c. 1980 © Oliviero Leonardi

In your opinion, what is Leonardi's lasting impact on the art world? Did he influence any other artists or movements?

As mentioned earlier, his experiments with materials and the medium he used represent a significant contribution to the field of art.
Through his explored themes and innovative experiments, he is an important post-war link to early 20th-century Futurism and European Avant-garde in general. In our opinion, he is one of the links between modernist art and contemporary art, not just within the Italian art scene but at a broader level.
To facilitate this recontextualization, we are reintroducing his art to the world; its meaning for us today will become clear.
It is important to note that he also founded an art school in Rome named Romacrea welcoming students for 25 years. Association Oliviero Leonardi is currently in the process of connecting with his former students, some with impactful artistic careers such as the one of Patrizia Simonetti, who is an award-winning artist based in Italy whose paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions nationally, Argentina, and Spain.

What are the biggest challenges you face in preserving Leonardi's memory and legacy? Conversely, what exciting opportunities do you see for bringing his work to new audiences?

As an ongoing matter, Association Oliviero Leonardi is tasked with ensuring appropriate cataloging and archiving of his oeuvre. It is important to note that most of his life and most of his oeuvre were stored in large boxes for the past 15 to 20 years. The process of opening all the boxes took several months, and we were in awe of our discovery every time we opened a box. His oeuvre is still in the process of cataloging, and so far, we have been able to reference the paintings on steel.
The biggest challenge we face in preserving his legacy is to make sure that the rediscovery of his art is being taken into account in terms of art history, from an academic point of view as well within the art world. The process feels like we are bringing the artist and his legacy back to life!
We understand that the lines of art history are carefully written by art historians who, in a way, collectively agree to mention or exclude artists and place them within art movements and tendencies. His art, which was never properly placed in the context of post-war Italian and European modernism, is now difficult to grasp as the lenses of the art world have changed.
The underlying question that is important to pose is: does his art still speak to us the way it spoke to people in the 1970s? The art of Alberto Burri, for example, also speaks a different language for our time. But because his art has been properlyevaluated, written about, and introduced into art history in a timely manner, the art world and art historians have many opportunities to learn about it and, if necessary, adjust the lenses to use to interpret it and learn from it. In the case of Oliviero Leonardi, we start from scratch, and unlike contemporary artists whose language we know, we go into the land of the past. It is an exciting process to develop and steer, and we are very devoted to it.

Are there any upcoming exhibitions or displays planned to showcase Leonardi's work? If so, can you tell me more about them?

Yes, definitely. As of now, Leonardi's work is scheduled to be exhibited at the XV Florence Biennale to be held in October 2025. The intention is to continue exhibiting his work in Italy and globally. In that sense, we are open to collaborations.
In addition, his archival work is already available to the public, containing all the past art critics documents, exhibitionsdocuments, press appearances, prizes as well as photo series showcasing his art studio in Rome and exhibitions. A large portion of the archives and the website dedicated to him published by Association Oliviero Leonardi are already translated in Italian, English and French. Soon, we will release several correspondences to the public to better grasp the artist and his artistic vision.
Association Oliviero Leonardi is also working towards the publication of several essays and articles in cooperation with art curators and academics. As the recontextualization work is an ongoing process, we often rediscover new interesting elements and perspectives about his work. We are also working on a print catalogue to showcase his paintings on steel, which we expect to be able to distribute globally soon.
The open archives and official website dedicated to Oliviero Leonardi can be found here: www.oliviero-leonardi.com.

How do you plan to ensure the proper archiving and documentation of Leonardi's work, including any personal papers, sketches, or correspondence?

First, digitalize everything as we found it, which is the step before conservation and exhibition. Most of the archives are already digitized and available online. We have photographed all the paintings on steel and we are currently photographing the rest of Leonardi's work, including sketches, paintings on papers and canvas, sculpture, Murano glasses, ceramics and bas-reliefs.
Second, it will be necessary to initiate a conservation process for some artworks, since paper and especially photography are very prone to fading and falling into pieces; for others, we understand that preventive conservation would be appropriate (for example, using non-acidic archival quality materials).
Third, we are planning a chemical analysis when these steps above are completed to fill the gaps in the analysis of his unique art medium and processes.

THE DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE, Painting on steel, 100x70 cm, c. 1976 © Oliviero Leonardi

What strategies do you have in mind to engage the public with Leonardi's art and keep his memory alive?

As mentioned, we are looking to engage the public through several ways, including the website dedicated to the artist, publications in art magazines and academic journals, exhibitions and everything in between. We believe that the story of Leonardi is worth sharing and engaging with.
On that point, we are open to interesting collaborations, particularly with art historians, art curators, artists, conservators, art experts, public and private institutions, and collections and collectors.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for how future generations will remember Oliviero Leonardi?

As an important bridge between Avant-garde art and contemporary art, we will be looking into evidencing his impact and contribution. We would aim for him to be remembered the way he was: an artist who dared to experiment, who loved life itself, and reimagined it many times.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.

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