Luciano Ventrone

(Rome 17 November 1942 – Collelongo 16 April 2021)
Luciano Ventrone moves to Denmark at the age of six, invited to live with Lady Metha Petersen, a wealthy and most of all lovely woman who lavishes him with gifts. Among her presents, a box of coloured pencils…and from that time colours have shaped his life. He returns to Italy after completing his education, and due to his family situation, Ventrone takes on several jobs but nevertheless, in 1960 he manages to attend the arts school in Rome. After obtaining his high school diploma in 1964, he studies Architecture until 1968 and, after the student protests, he decides to abandon his studies and, dedicate himself to painting – which he never has abandoned and was his only source of income at that time. Ventrone confronts himself with all the main issues of contemporary art, until he arrives to Realism. In an article published in 1983 in the Italian magazine L’Espresso, Antonello Trombadori motivates the art critic Federico Zeri to take an interest in Ventrone inviting the artist to approach still life. From this point on, Ventrone starts a life-long journey analysing all the aspects of Nature, always capturing more and more details that are almost invisible. As he likes to tell to his selected students: painting is not about the mere representation of an object, it’s about colour and light. The right proportions between those two elements form a shape inside the space. The subject cannot be seen as it is but as an abstract element.