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"Hollywood couldn't have scripted it more dramatically: a handsome, dapper, and deeply inventive Italian artist gains traction on the international art scene, then dies tragically at the age of 36 in 1970, mere months after a career-making show at the legendary Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. But such is the all-too-truncated story of Domenico Gnoli, whose deeply idiosyncratic, Pop Art\u2013 and surrealist-inflected canvases enjoyed a cultish following in the years immediately after his death\u2014and are back in the spotlight again.\n\nPinterestFacebook\n\nLuxembourg &amp;amp; Dayan, a gallery on New York's Upper East Side is currently showing 18 of Gnoli's paintings\u2014tightly cropped images of hair braids, shirt collars, and upholstered furniture rendered in fetishistic detail\u2014along with six of his fantastical drawings of odd creatures inserted into domestic settings. Notably, it's Gnoli's first solo exhibition in New York since his 1969 debut at Sidney Janis. The Luxembourg &amp;amp; Dayan show, which is composed largely of loans from private collections (so, technically, nothing is for sale), comes on the heels of another Gnoli headline: In October, Christie's London sold his Busto Femminile di Dorso (Female Bust from the Back), from 1965, for close to $3.7 million\u2014some three times its presale high estimate and an auction record for the artist's work.\n\nPinterestFacebook\n\nRaised in Italy by an art historian and a ceramist, Gnoli showed an early aptitude for art\u2014and little tolerance for formal training. He abandoned his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in favor of travel throughout Europe, odd jobs (he dabbled in stage design), and an extended stint in New York. In 1963 he settled in the Mallorcan town of Dei\u00E0, where he met his wife, artist Yannick Vu.\n\nPinterestFacebookFotografia di Alessandro Vasari\n\nGnoli exhibited regularly in Europe and occasionally in the United States, but his career started to accelerate rapidly in 1968, when his paintings were featured at the Venice Biennale and at Documenta IV in Kassel, Germany. Janis took notice and gave him a show in December 1969. Gnoli died of cancer the following April.\n\nPinterestFacebook\n\nThe works assembled at Luxembourg &amp;amp; Dayan typify the technique and aesthetic for which Gnoli is best known. Whether depicting a detail of wrinkled bedsheets or a woman's voluptuous torso constrained by her slim-fitting dress, his generously scaled paintings often combine a Pop Art\u2013emphasis on fashion and furnishings with an almost Renaissance-like attention to folds, draping, and patterns. They also have distinctly gritty surfaces\u2014an effect the artist achieved by adding sand to his acrylic paints\u2014lending them an earthy, handmade quality that contrasts with their refined subject matter.\n\nPinterestFacebook\n\nGnoli never painted from life, according to his widow, who was in town for the opening. \"He had an extraordinary visual memory,\" she told AD. \"He'd look at something or somebody and then it was imprinted\u2014it's a capacity that not many people have. It was spontaneous and it was fascinating.\"\n\n\"Domenico Gnoli: Paintings 1964\u20131969\" is on view at Luxembourg &amp;amp; Dayan through June 30 (64 E. 77th St., New York; luxembourgdayan.com).\n\nPinterestFacebookFundaci??n Yannick y Ben Jakober, Alcudia, Mallorca, Spain"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/domenico-gnoli-exhibition-luxembourg-dayan>