Oro d’Italia

Carla Accardi, Giacomo Balla, Alighiero Boetti, Agostino Bonalumi, Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani, Roberto Crippa, Gino De Dominicis, Luciano Fabro, Salvatore Falci, Familiare del Boccati, Lara Favaretto, Lucio Fontana, Jacopo di Cione, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Master of the Straus Madonna, Fausto Melotti, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giovanni Rizzoli, Remo Salvadori, Simone da Firenze, Tommaso Spazzini Villa, Rudolf Stingel, Paul Thorel, Adolfo Wildt

An exhibition examining the enduring role and power of gold in Italian art, featuring the work of more than 20 artists ranging from the 14th to the 21st centuries, will be presented by Casoli De Luca in New York. Oro d’Italia explores why gold has been such a compelling medium for artists through time, because of its malleability, reflectivity, and color, as well as its inherent value and symbolic meaning. The works range in time and content from Renaissance gold-ground panel religious paintings to satirical uses in contemporary art, and with a special focus on the seemingly oxymoronic use of gold by Arte Povera artists.

“We wanted to trace a narrative of Italian artistic identity through gold because of its timeless allure to artists and audiences,” stated gallery co-founder Sergio Casoli. “Sometimes sacred and sometimes irreverent, serving as a celestial background or a decadent highlight, gold is always beautiful and always arresting. It is no wonder that this material is so pervasive throughout the history of Italian art.”

Oro d’Italia, presented in collaboration with Studio Geuna, includes paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and mixed media works utilizing this precious metal. The show begins with a few works by Florentine masters of the 14th century and continues to Futurists, like Giacomo Balla. The core of the exhibition is a rich overview of post-war Italian art, with works by Carla Accardi, Alberto Burri, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Giuseppe Penone, and Michelangelo Pistoletto.

“We are particularly intrigued with the use of gold in post-war art, especially Arte Povera, which marked a seismic shift in Italian art,” stated gallery co-founder Mattia De Luca. “Tracing the artistic alchemy of gold from the earliest works, in which it conjures up sacred space, to its recombinant use by contemporary artists, reveals that its role in art is as malleable as the element itself.”

Oro d’Italia is the first program in the United States mounted by Casoli De Luca, founded by noted Italian gallerist Sergio Casoli and collector Mattia De Luca.

Established in Rome in 2018, Casoli De Luca focuses on modern Italian masters and international contemporary artists. A noted gallerist and expert in post-war and modern art, founder Sergio Casoli grew up in the building where Lucio Fontana’s studio was located in Milan and started his first gallery there in 1985 anchored by Fontana’s works. Later expanding to a second gallery in Milan and a third in Rome

Casoli ceased operations in 2001 to retire to Filicudi. He returned to the art world in 2018 to establish this new gallery with Mattia De Luca, a private art advisor and dealer of post-war and contemporary art who comes from a prominent family of Italian collectors. Casoli De Luca maintains an international and innovative program through exhibitions at its gallery in Palazzo Albertoni Spinola in the Piazza Campitelli in Rome and exhibits in select art fairs.