BIOGRAPHY

 

Leonardo Chionna was born at Latiano (BR) on 3 August 1957. A contemporary sculptor and painter, he has been active for some time on the Italian artistic scene. He began his career when still very young. He has organised numerous exhibitions and taken part in various artistic events, receiving acknowledgements and prizes. In the Eighties he frequented the poets of the “poetry workshop” at Lecce University, one of whom was Salvatore Caliolo, founder of the magazine “L’incantiere”. At the same time he enjoyed the friendship of one of the greatest philosophers of our time, Arrigo Colombo, collaborating with him in the “Utopia” movement which he founded. These cultural influences were decisive in forming Chionna’s art. His first work date back to the Seventies, with theme rich in original suggestions that transformed Chionna into a shaman figure of contemporary art. Various art critics and historians have taken an interest in the artist, such as Gino Spinelli de’ Santelena, G. Rubino, R. Rizzi and Vittorio Sgarbi. Articles about him have appeared in the press: in the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, the Corriere del Giorno, Rome, the Quotidiano di Puglia, Arte, Disegno e Pittura.PERIODSIn the Seventies, shunning any commercial ambition, the artist showed his works in places where they could be contemplated immersed in spiritual silence: churches, castles, woods and deserted beaches. We especially recall an exhibition on floating rafts that transported sculpture into the open sea, carried along by the current like boats without a sail, symbol of the greatest freedom, abandoned to their fate, where they sank, keeping the secret of their creativity, eternally, until the day when they can be recovered. In recent years his research has been focussed on “The New Atlantis”, a project dear to the artist, resulting from his continuous inclination towards a more and more objective and essential language, which finds fulfilment in a series of works in terracotta and bronze. Works that seem to come from a distant future, though they bear traces of a remote past that is nevertheless familiar to our contemporaries. Chionna materialises his own Utopia, the possible new bronze of a present which the artist feels has now reached its twilight.SUBJECTS:

Critics have often defined Chionna’s art as “courageous”, but his works look towards the future, describing it in plastic forms. His works testify to a research that is projected out of its time, from which it looks to our history, traces of ancient and modern civilisation, old and new Utopias in forms and elements that come from afar, travelling through time, and which enable the onlooker to probe the inside of matter, penetrating its geometric casing. Archetypes of a distant future that give a glimpse of a “fossilised” past which time brings to light, becoming its external casing.

 

TECHNIQUES:

 

sculpture and oil paint. EXHIBITINS Expo Arte, Bari; Apant’08, Naxos; Artefiera, Catania; Vitarte, Viterbo; Arte Fiera, Genoa; Arte Fiera, Florence; Fortezza Da Basso, Florence; Arte Fiera, Parma; Arte Fiera, Padua; Garda Golf, Desenzano sul Garda; Castel Gandolfo, Rome; Golf Club Ugolino, Florence; Assisi Endurance Life Style, Assisi.