A slice of 1960s la dolce vita has just touched down at Luxembourg & Dayan on New York's Upper East Side, and the natives should be delighted. Domenico Gnoli, born in Rome in 1933 to a prominent art historian and his painter/ceramist wife, first made a name for himself as a theatre designer, even creating the set for an As You Like It production at London's Old Vic in 1955. But by the mid-60s he had turned exclusively to painting and illustration, exchanging the large-scale optics of stage design for a perspective on reality that plays tricks with the minuscule.
In the next decade or so, shuttling between Rome, New York and Majorca (Warhol-photo-booth-style photographs of Gnoli and his wife, the artist Yannick Vu, show him to have been quite the Pop Art dandy), he had developed a mesmerizing body of work. In the Luxembourg & Dayan show, which showcases 15 of his 83 known mixed-acrylic-and-sand canvases for the first time in New York, his theatrical flair and surrealist attention to sartorial and domestic detail converge in images that owe much to both the sculptural qualities of early-Renaissance fresco painting and the sexy freeze-frames of Balthus.
His canvases, which can run to over 6-ft high, paradoxically zoom in on such relatively intimate affairs as a parted head of hair, or maidenly plait; a prettily prim top, held together with pearl buttons, or strategic pleats at the top of a gentleman's pinstripes.
Post-coitally gentle are the outlines of a couple asleep under a quilted bedcover. Meanwhile, Brooks Brothers could make great use of his button-down 'Striped Shirt Lapel,' 1969, which, given its vintage, nevertheless saucily brings the Wigged One's everyday garb to mind.
Such images combine the exaggerated, dramatic gesturing of Gnoli's abandoned stage craft - there's almost always a suggestion of theater's grandly draped curtains in his fabric and flesh studies - with the gimlet eye of a movie close-up (it's hard to imagine that the director of 'I Am Love', Luca Guadagnino, isn't familar with Gnoli's art).
The artist, who died in 1970 at the age of just 36, monumentalised the mundane as if he was haunted by the Fascist architecture of his Roman childhood. Some kind of strange dreams seem also to have informed his tempera-acrylic-and-ink 'Monster Drawings,' a bestiary done in 1967, six of which hang on the gallery's fourth floor. Equally hallucinatory are the drawings of a snail that fills an entire sofa, and an ostrich outstretched in a limo.
'Curly Red Hair' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from a private collection.
'Red Dress Collar' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from a private collection.
'Due Dormienti' by Domenico Gnoli, 1966, from Fondazione Orsi
'Braid' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from a private collection.
'Ritratto di Luis T' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fondazione Orsi
'Coupe Au Rasoir (No.1)' by Domenico Gnoli, 1964, from a private collection
'Striped Shirt Lapel' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Stiftung Sammlung Kemp
'Black Hair' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from a private collection
'Borsetta da Donna' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from a private collection
'Busto di Donna in Rosa' by Domenico Gnoli, 1966, from a private collection
'Chemisette Verte' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from a private collection
'Corner' by Domenico Gnoli, 1968, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Mallorca, Spain
White Bed by Domenico Gnoli, 1968, courtesy of Fondazione Maxxi Roma.
'Green Bed' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, Italy
'Poltrona' by Domenico Gnoli, 1966, from a private collection
'Striped Trousers' by Domenico Gnoli, 1969, from a private collection.
'Back View' by Domenico Gnoli, 1968, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
'What is a Monster? Ostrich in Car' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
'What is a Monster? The Bat Cat' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
'What is a Monster? Snail on Sofa' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
'What is a Monster? Winged Rhino at 15th Floor' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
'What is a Monster? Woman Sole in Bath Tub' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
'What is a Monster? Owl in Wardrobe' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain
ADDRESS
Luxembourg & Dayan
64 East 77th Street
New York
NY 10075
-
The Muravey Chair: Mehdi Dakhli on celebrating North Africa through contemporary designThe designer balances innovation and tradition in his unique pieces, which take cues from his Tunisian heritage
-
Remembering Yrjö Kukkapuro, Finnish grand master of design (1933-2025)Almost everyone in Finland has sat in a chair by designer Yrjö Kukkapuro, writes Wallpaper’s Emma O'Kelly, who met him at his studio in 2020 and here pays tribute to a design legend
-
Red beauty products to gift the aesthete in your life this Valentine’s DayThese red beauty products by the likes of Chanel and Comme des Garçons are ideal Valentine’s Day gifts for the aesthete in your life (even if that aesthete so happens to be you)
