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Luigi Ontani
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Luigi Ontani was born in Montovolo di Grizzana Morandi, part of Vergato at the foot of the Appennino mountains in the region Emiliano in 1943. In 1967 he made his debut at the Galleria San Petronio, in 1969 he took part in the collective “Information” at the gallery Diagramma owned by Luciano Inga Pin and in 1970 he held his first one-man show at the Galleria San Fedele in Milan, curated by Renato Barilli.
The Seventies were characterised by the Attico, the tableaux vivants, the trips between East and West.
The Attico was one of the most interesting exhibition spaces in that moment, a garage converted into an avant-garde gallery by Fabio Sargentini. The first tableau vivant in which Luigi Ontani presents himself as Tarzan was presented in the experimental section Area aperta in the exhibition Contemporanea designed by Achilles Bonito Oliva and held in the underground car park of Villa Borghese in Rome in 1973.
The Eighties characterise a return to painting, the exhibition I nuovi-nuovi, the transavant-garde and the post modern.
At the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna Renato Barilli reunites personalities who feel the need to return to the figuration and a craftsman type of manual work in the exhibition Dieci anni dopo – I nuovi-nuovi, among these personalities is Ontani who expresses a renewed interest for classic subjects. Jean-Christophe Amman invites him, as a bridge in the developing Transavanguardia group, together with Clemente, Cucchi, Chia, De Maria, Paladino, Tatafiore to participate in an exhibition in Kunsthalle Basil, which then travels to Essen and Amsterdam.
The Nineties present the first anthology at Villa delle Rose in Bologna, papier maché, glass, and ceramics are the materials used in his works. 1995 sees his triumphant return to the Biennale di Venezia, invited to exhibit in the Italian Pavilion by Gabriella Belli. In 2000 he is considered to be “The artist of the Year” and in 2001 at P.S.1 Moma Contemporary Art Center in New York he presented his retrospective curated by Carolyn Christov Bagargiev.
Among a continual succession of trips and exhibitions proposed in prestigious museums, international and national galleries, he deepens the theme of masks “Through the mask I go seeking the ideal legacy of a ritual that is everywhere in the world independent of the current conditions.”
Luigi Ontani.
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