GIANLUCA MOTTO.

Gianluca Motto was born in La Spezia in 1965. He began his painting career by attending courses given by Renzo Borella at “l’Officina Botteghe d’Arte” in his home town...

In a short time the artist emerges in the local art scene attracting the attention of critics and gallerists. Today Motto is in the national art scene.

Since 2009 he collaborates with the Art Gallery Sciaccheart where he is capturing the consensus of wide international audience.Since 2015 he has collaborated with the Galleria Mercurio Arte Contemporanra of Viareggio and the2017 has started to collaborate with the ARTEèKAOS Gallery in Alassio (Savona).

In 2018 he also collaborates with MFF Galerie in Paris and Saint Paul de Vence and with Il Melograno Gallery in Livorno From 2020 collaborations have been added with the ARTEèKAOS gallery in Bologna and the LA NUOVA FORMA gallery in Lanciano.

PERSONAL EXIBITIONS

2000 - “Gli Alberi del Re” - Torre Capitolare - Portovenere (SP)

2001 - “Senzatitolo” - Galleria Menhir - La Spezia - “Motto” - Chiostro di San Francesco – Sarzana (SP)

2002 - ” Angelincantati” - Villa Bottini - Lucca

2004 - Senza titolo - Galleria La Riseria - Novara- “Viaggimiraggi” - Centro Allende - La Spezia

2005 - “Submarine” - Giornata del Contemporaneo - Chiesa Romanica S. Maria - Vezzano Ligure (SP) - organizzato da Associazione Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani

2008 - “Nuvolegate” - galleria Menhir - La Spezia

2010 - “Animale” - CAMEC (Centro d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) - Rassegna Finestra sul Golfo - La Spezia - Galleria Sciaccheart - Riomaggiore (SP)

2013 - “Invito al viaggio”- Galleria De Bonis - Reggio Emilia - Galleria Sciaccheart - Riomaggiore (SP) - “Chessmate” - Centro Allende - La Spezia

2015 - “effimeREali”- Mercurio Arte Contemporanea –Viareggio (LU) Galleria Sciaccheart – Riomaggiore (SP)

2016 - " effimeReali”- Torre degli Upezzinghi -Calcinaia (PI)

2017 - personale presso la residenza d’epoca Hotel Club I Pini Viareggio (LU)

2018 - La forma dell’acqua - Villaggio del Palio . Passeggiata Morin La Spezia

2021 - Out of the box - Galleria ARE ARTE – Roma

COLLECTIVE  EXIBITIONS

1999 - “IV Rassegna giovani linguaggi dell’immagine” - Centro Allende - La Spezia

2002 - ”In kiostro” - Chiostro di S. Francesco - Sarzana (SP)

2004  -  “Emergenze 2” - Fortezza di Sarzanello - Sarzana (SP) - Torre Carolingia - Framura (SP)

           - Fondamenta di S. Pietro - Portovenere (SP)

           - Galleria On the Road Art Gallery – Varese

           - “Il libretto digitale” - Centro Allende (SP) – presentato dall’Istituzione per i Servizi Culturali e Galleria il Gabbiano

2007 - “Settimana dell’arte in Sardegna” - Club Santa Giusta - Castiadas (CA) presentato dalla Galleria d’Arte San Lorenzo - “Purezza”- Rifugio antiaereo Martana - Massa - presentato dalla Regione Toscana

2010 - Settembre d’arte - La Spezia - presentato dalla Galleria d’Arte Sciaccheart

2011 - Settembre d’arte - La Spezia - presentato dalla Galleria d’Arte Sciaccheart

2012 - Settembre d’arte - La Spezia - presentato dalla Galleria d’Arte Sciaccheart

2015 - Biennale di Genova - Palazzo della Borsa

2016 - Different Corners - Galleria EUROPA -Lido di Camaiore (LU) - Il terzo Paradiso. Respect : People in moviment - Centro d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CAMeC La Spezia

2017 - Generazioni. Gli artisti della città a confronto. Centro d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CAMecLa Spezia

2019 - Art Shopping Salon d’Art Contemporain . Paris . Carrousel du Louvre.

PRIZES AND AWARDS

2002 - 1°classificate at Premio “Vernazzarte” - Vernazza (SP)

2003 - 3°classificate at Premio Nazionale di Pittura “Città di Novara”

2006 - Selected for  l’European Arteam Prize - Museo Civico di Arte Contemporanea - Albissola Marina (SV)

- 1° classificate  at  “Premio Città’ di Massarosa” (Lu)

- 1° classificate at  “Premio Fuori Città’ Studio” - Lucca

2015 - Premiato alla Biennale di Genova

Paintings by the artist are in the Ferruccio and Anna Maria Battolini Collection donated by the critic to the CAMEC (Center of Modern and Contemporary Art) in La Spezia.

SEE ALL ARWORKS BY GIANLUCA MOTTO

Critical Shards

"... it is very gratifying when you can see that a young person who has undertaken, with humility and fervor, the difficult path of creativity, in a short time, demonstrates intellectual vivacity and the pleasure of serious and motivated experimentation".

 Ferruccio Battolini (art critic) - 2000

 "... and it is the paintings, apparently more restrained and unformed, that allow Motto to undertake the strenuous search to recover a meaning, which is not only suggestive, in the universe of forms. In my view, this is the highest component of Motto's painting, the one that requires the greatest attention and continuous surveillance of one's means and conditions of inspiration, an acute awareness of one's own expressive register ".

Luigi Cocevari - Cussar (art critic) - 2001

"... Two basic principles: color over form, abstract over figurative. To which a theme is added ... And it is the emotion that speaks volumes ... "

      Gianluca Testa (art journalist) - 2002

“… Motto's is poetry of color, energy of the dimensional mystery of sidereal space. Color, above all, is the word, the constitutive fabric of his art ".

      Alfredo Pasolino (art critic) - 2003

"... Gianluca Motto's painting is always an expression of a subtle discomfort, alien to showy gestures, in which the lyrical element softens and refines the expressive intent ... his colors, many mixed and shaded, transmit without necessarily having to confine themselves within lines precise ".

Enrico Formica (art critic) - 2004

 "... Painting with strong contents, crowded between a color not refined by inappropriate affectation and permeated with the positive creative attitude of the painter, who makes the experience of art a privileged opportunity to penetrate reality with a disenchanted gaze".

      Valerio Cremolini (art critic) - 2006

No pins

It so happens that I’m here looking.

above me a white butterfly flapping in the air

wings that are only his

and on my hand there flies a shadow

not another, not of another, but only his.

“Title not necessary”

Wislawa Szymborska

The natural world is a fundamental part of Motto’s paintings. We already know his bull-like animals, blazing lions, swift paws running across small and large paintings, punctuated with letters and words that mark, as bold rubber stamps, lively evolving the pictorial scene of the event.

The animals, the plants, the wind are elements from which he often draws inspirational force for his visual narration. I do not know if it is the abstract attraction or just the particular sensitivity, the fact is- it is a field of investigation preferred to others and practiced with a command of expressive means, a talent that has always been given to the author.

In this series he measures himself with a very ancient classic theme which has always given a metaphor for that which transforms and that is intrinsically fragile. The butterfly, the bride of beauty, changing and always new, flapping it wings with the verses of the poet’s favorite by the artist, Charles Baudelaire, flies on the thoughts through the notes on the pentagram, in an unceasing dance of colors and compositions that draw reasons from the reflections of Motto on the uncertain throb of life. Butterflies move, are alive, windswept and from the movements that transform from chrysalis to dazzling insects always searching for colors and scents.

No! No pins of the collector who, although he has the merit of safeguarding the names and colors of extinct species, freezes the beauty into illusion to keep forever. The perception and the restitution of variety are very strong in Motto and produce headline kaleidoscopes of colorful wings in search of a primordial unity that combines the human world and the animal world. The amazement as much as the ephemeral beauty holds for us is also great, a sort of pictorial journey of listening and wonder of the natural data, preferably wrapped on a squarepattern, but with several exceptions. The small format on a square base is congenial to the compositions of Motto that, despite the limited measures, does not lose details or descriptions but gives explosion to his ideational representative with rhythmic immediacy, as though there is a want to go towards the essence of the nature of the butterfly and its concept full of meanings.

If I look back, I can see the mosaics butterfly Escher, where what matters is the repetition of forms and not the chromatic qualities; or the portrait of Princess Este by Pisanello, in which the flicker of Lepidoptera alludes to the immortal soul of a girl who died at twenty-one; I can see the white statue of Love and Psyche of Canova, thirtysh, who immortalized the butterfly, symbol of purity of love, on the hands of lovers. From time to time and from context to context the butterfly has not ceased to be a subject – thought of and depicted, narrated in verse or prose with meanings always different and new.

Mottos’ butterflies are always crossed by a quiver if you look at them you have the impression that they are about to disappear, to fly away, going to into another dimension, as passing from flower to flower braving all dangers. Fleeing thoughts in the form of butterflies that meditate on the unstable equilibrium of life, the pursuit of beauty and happiness, moments of Eden tested or only touched upon and accompanying us.