Ettore Pinelli
Ettore Pinelli trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, graduating in Painting in 2007 and in Exhibition design and curatorial studies in 2010, in collaboration with the Center for Contemporary Art “Luigi Pecci” in Prato.
In 2009 he founded LAB (Young Artists Sharing Ideas | Florence) and in 2018 he started STUDIO [2], a new collaborative project involving artists and their studios in eastern Sicily.
In 2015 he participated in the Workshop “Residenza Ritratto a Mano 2.0” with Simone Berti and Valentina Vetturi at Caramanico Terme (PE) and in 2015 he was selected by Eva Comuzzi and Andrea Bruciati for “Some Velvet Drawings (ArtVerona)”. Between 2015 and 2016 Pinelli was a finalist in numerous awards including the San Fedele Foundation Award (Milan), Combat Prize Award (Livorno), Francesco Fabbri Award (Treviso). In 2015 he won the Marina di Ravenna Award and in 2016 the We Art International Award (Milan). In 2016 he is one of the finalists of TU 35, geographies of emerging art in Tuscany. In 2016 he presented “Come Out And Play” from Basement Project Room Contemporary Art to Fondi (LT) and “Slight Fist” at Galleria Quam in Scicli (RG).
In 2017 he took part in “Modernolatria Boccioni+100” exhibiting at the National Gallery of Cosenza and at DIALOGICA at the Regional Gallery of Palazzo Bellomo in Syracuse. In 2017 he was a finalist at the 18th Cairo Prize (Palazzo Reale Milano). Invited by “I Martedì Critici” to participate in the project of Residenze Artistiche Bocs Art curated by Alberto Dambruoso (Cosenza). In 2018 participates in the exhibition “On Painting” a generational dialogue with Daniele Galliano, Marco Cingolani and Giulio Saverio Rossi, curated by Stefania Margiacchi, in SpazioSiena (SI) and SELVATICO thirteen, a focus on painting, through exhibitions in Lower Romagna (RA). In March 2018 he presented his personal project MONO at the Fusion Art Gallery in Turin, then reformulated at ArtVerona as a two-dimensional installation. In July of the same year he presented “Un luogo sconosciuto” (An unknown place) at RITMO (independent space) in Catania. Pinelli was inserted by Camillo Langone in the site “Eccellenti Pittori, il diario della pittura italiana vivente”.
Among his solo exhibitions, we would like to point out those at the Fusion Art Gallery in Turin, the Quam Gallery in Scicli (RG), Amy-D Arte Spazio (Milan), SpazioSiena (SI), Ritmo (independent space) in Catania, Sacca Gallery (RG), Traffic Gallery (Bergamo), Galleria Cartavetra (Firenze), Circoloquadro (Milan), Kromya (Verona) and LABS Contemporary in Bologna. Pinelli was finally mentioned by the magazine Arte (Cairo Editore) as one of the under 40 significant artists in the state of Italian artistic research. He is the winner of the painting section at Arteam Cup 2020 Prize.
Interview With Ettore Pinelli
Hi Ettore, tell us about your background. How and when did you first start to paint?
I always remember having to do with painting, but even before with drawing. I was a child who frequently observed and reproduced anything was around him. I was hypnotized by paintings i had at home, and i would like to copy on the most faithful way to reproduce it technically. Afterwards, as i grew up, i chose to attend schools that could bring me closer to the art, in a systematic way and complement to my innate attitude in a more concrete way, so as to turn curiosity into a genuine interest.
How do you begin to work? What is your process like?
I start off in very slowly way, observing and researching videos and images on the web that strike me so much that i need to translate them through painting or drawing. I start cataloguing several of it, printing it out and projecting on the wall until i literally feel permeated by them. Once I’ve decided what to represent, I move on to the next phase, in which i hypothesis how to paint it. After this slow phase of direct dialogue with the original image, in which i attemp to capture details, i begin to paint through a fairly broad grey palette. The working sessions needs time, from several hours to weeks, until the image meets my criteria and the goals set at the beginning. Frequently, the next step to the figurative structure is the use of semi- transparent colours veils, that screen the image, sometimes like a photographic filter, sometimes like physical tools that literally destroy the image, almost derailing everything i've created on canvas.
Can you share more about your experience at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and how it has influenced your artistic style and approach?
It was an intense moment of opening up, observing and listening to each other experiences. In Academy everyone starts very young, around the age of 18 or 19, and generally lacks so much culture and experience, which through the painting class everyone choose to attend, can be stimulated and incentivized, until one understands what interests of each student might be and become complementary to a path that is directed towards one own sensibility, even if it’s still partial. I don’t believe that those years have generated tangible influences in my painting today. Your research focuses on the anthropological observation of the relational aspects of human nature conducted at its limits.
Can you delve deeper into the inspiration behind this focus and why you find it significant in the context of contemporary society?
I believe that in every artist research it’s significant to find a way to forward, and for this reason everyone needs to find themes close to own sensibility. As my individual experience is concerned, the observation of reality, of truly experienced situations, it’s my more significant choice. Paradoxically, real situations that turns into images, and that are within everyone's reach, have a strong hold on my subconscious, make me curious and afterwards they question me about some aspects of our contemporaneity, from real stances to instinctive and physically primordial actions, that detach us from our status civilized people, until they transform us into something else.
How do you select specific images, videos, and iconographies from the media for your research, and what criteria guide your choices in highlighting relationships brought to the extreme by contemporary individuals with information?
I’m looking for images with visually explicit content, with a great strength inside, but that retain the naturalness of the action and extraction context. Over the years, through the working flow, I’ve builded a visual archive with a considerable number of images, and on each work session or individual project i start on, it can be a real visual source and increase a cyclical mechanism that makes the motivation for an endless representation. Your controlled gesture in painting is noted as preventing errors or rethinks.
Can you discuss how this controlled approach influences the meaning and interpretation of your work, particularly in the context of the extreme relationships you explore?
I would say that it doesn’t affect the meaning of the images so much as the process to arriving at their creation. Controlling the process, limiting interventions that create pictorial structures of excessive definition, as far as I am concerned, is the method that excludes that an image on canvas can become void of vitality. Finalizing the first phase of the work, where i dedicate entirely myself to the creation of the structure, i like to pause and observe it, with a clear detachment, and if the work has the capacity to surprise me as something other than me, i’m sure that it has enough strength to be defined as such.
You mention a preference for painting and drawing as methods of returning the idea. Could you explain how these visual mediums contribute to the process of construction and deconstruction of images in your work, allowing them to acquire their own vitality and autonomy?
Every artist prefers techniques and mediums, and for me the painting and drawing are as close as possible to my sensibility. I consider them to be absolutely living media with a great capacity for transformation, and these two technical peculiarities, if supported in the most natural way during the different stages of creating the image or painting, allow precisely as much vitality and autonomy as possible. The surface painting is a distinctive characteristic of your practice.
How does this choice of medium, with its light and dense drafts, contribute to the exploration of extreme relational aspects of human nature and the contemporary relationship with information?
Everything is interpenetrating, even the modality how the colour is stretch on the canvas makes a difference in the final concept that emerges through the image represented. If we were to use other parameters and other languages, in a verbal discussion, it would be directly proportional to making a speech through a direct sentence, rather than skirting around it, trying time after time to optimise the speech to make it clearer and more understandable. And all has a clear correlation with the ability of images to be direct and unfiltered in the communication we passively absorb through the daily media and information data.
How has the city you live and work in influenced you and the art you create?
I live and work in a city far from the italian art centers, beyond the generous community of artist friends that i’m associate with and whom i compare myself daily, the only positive influence is the time and space that i have without restriction, and which allow me a long periods of reflection and the right concentration when needed.
Describe a real-life situation that inspired you.
Everything that has to do with real life inspires me, not a single episode.
