Nicoli, Claudio

Claudio Nicoli was born in 1958 in San Giovanni in Persiceto,in the province of Bologna. He graduated in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. He is at present living and working in Castiglione del Lago, in Umbria, close to Perugia. Thanks to a personal meeting with Peter Hartung, the owner of Comicart.dk, in Italy in the summer of 2008, we can now present this fine artist to a Danish as well as an international audience. Whether working in miniature or on a large scale Nicoli prefers to use terracotta and bronze. He has been active on the artistic scene for more than two decades, mounting personal exhibitions in Italy and abroad and is regularly present in the catalogues of the most important italian auction houses. His museum background is that of Marino Marini who looked to ancient sculpture and the Etruscans. But Nicoli does not linger in the past. As a twentieth-century sculptor he looks to the Apollonian (here we are reminded of Arturo Martini), but also to the Dionysian. Myth is a part of his unconscious dreamlike quality. He manages to be heretical yet at the same time severe, rigorous in his harkening to classical tradition and revolutionary in the way he renders explicit lessons leamedfrom contemporary artistic representation. Claudio Nicoli is a timeless sculptorer. Thanks to his poetic ability he can be compared with the Masters who over the centuries have built up the great museum of our art history. Nicoli is also doing some fantastic drawings and watercolours - both closely related to his sculpture universe. It's a greta honour to bring these works to the world, made in Italy!