Leonardo Pellicanò

Leonardo Pellicanò (Rome, 1994) lives and works in Paris.

Leonardo Pellicanò works mainly with painting, exploring complex dimensions of thought and feeling through the medium. The memory of a cultured gaze is mixed in Pellicanò’s work with the freshness of the strokes, creating a fleeting space where pictorial structures open up to unexpected presences. Art history is utilized freely in a language of apparitions, going from pagan imagery to alchemical symbolism of the middle ages. The works breathe of an exalting quality of freedom, they seem to be the physical remnant of a psychic exploration, at the edge of losing grip with reality, and slipping into a world of colorful hallucinations.

Pellicanò holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan and a Master’s degree from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne. He has always been involved with his own generation of artists, organizing shows and performances in both institutional contexts and independent projects.

Pellicanò’s solo exhibitions include Repair is the dream, Emanuela Campoli, Paris (2023), OltrePanico!, Sentiment, Zurich (2023), WHIMS, Cafè Des Glaces, Tonnerre, France (2022), Shedding all the dead wood, Fondazione Pini, Milan (2018).

His work has been included in Silver Screen, Harkawik Gallery, Los Angeles (2022), Weary Friends, 13 Vitrine, Renens, Switzerland (2022), LEMANIANA; Reflets et d'autres scènes, Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve (2021), TRANSATLANTICO, MANA Contemporary, New Jersey, USA (2020), A healthy dose of confusion before the Bang, Federica Schiavo Gallery, Milan (2020), Academiae Youth Art Biennale 2018, Fortezza, Bolzano, Italie (2019).