Collection: LORENZO PUGLISI

Lorenzo Puglisi (1971) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Bologna. Following his high school graduation, Puglisi traveled throughout Europe to engage directly with the works of the great masters who influence him, such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Leonardo da Vinci. His work draws from the visual language of classical painting, at first focusing on the recurring subject of the human head and later on that of the portrait, extracting timeless human gestures and emotions. In recent years, Puglisi has focused his practice on large format canvases related to great masterpieces of the past. His powerful, mysterious figures emerge from absolute darkness on the canvas. The brushstrokes, in shades of white and red, simulate streams of light that define volumes, faces, and body parts, hinting at an expression or a gesture and evoking the essence of historical paintings. 

Lorenzo Puglisi has an extensive and distinguished exhibition history marked by site-specific installations in culturally significant and often sacred spaces with ties to the historical masters that influence him. In 2019, on the occasion of his solo exhibition Il Grande Sacrificio in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Puglisi exhibited a nearly 20-foot-long oil painting on wood depicting his vision of The Last Supper to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death. His work was exhibited in the same room as da Vinci's original masterpiece. His work has also been shown at the Basicila of Santo Spirito in Florence and the Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples, where he dialogued with Caravaggio’s Seven Acts of Mercy. In 2022, he participated in the 59th Venice Biennale with Viaggio al termine della notte, exhibited in the Syrian-Arab Pavilion. Outside of Italy, Puglisi’s work has appeared in the crypt of King’s Cross Saint Pancras Church in London and in a solo exhibition at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga. Puglisi’s self-portrait recently entered the permanent collection of Le Gallerie degli Uffizi, at the request of museum director Eike Schmidt.