Ercole Pignatelli

Ercole Pignatelli was born in Lecce on April 28, 1935 in a family of freelancers. The Pignatelli family lives in a 17th century noble house with high ceilings and a terrace from which you can see the countryside, the baroque churches, the sea and the ruins. His first inspirations are linked to the discovery of architecture, nature and the colours that stand out in the places where he spent his childhood. At the age of 12 he discovered Picasso's works and fell in love with them. He attends the art institute and is always attentive to developments and the study of contemporary art. After organizing an exhibition in the premises of the Circolo Cittadino in Lecce, he decides to move to Milan, he is almost 19 years old. He took a house in the Brera district and came into contact with cultural pillars such as Salvatore Quasimodo, Ugo Mulas, Milena Milani, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Giorgio Kaisserlian.

He began gradually, with patience, passion and talent, his climb towards success, which led him to become a painter of international renown, the Salento roots always return in his personal and artistic path, through the colors, shapes, landscapes of which are rich in his sculptural and pictorial works. In Pignatelli's works, we are told a place, desired, an elsewhere where each of us would like to be. That of the Salento master is his own imaginary place, which is told through a large and coherent mosaic made with paintings that tell, each one, the places of desires, life, memories and the generating power of matter.

Exuberant paintings crossed by a vitalistic and powerful aura that mixes materials, symbols and reality. In this parallel universe, real and fantastic are mixed so that the viewer can enter a fairytale world of the artist.

The master has recounted a world of farms, acrobat women, vegetations and lush landscapes that are interspersed with desolate arbours and melancholic natures. Everything, however, bursting with strength and energy. The construction of the painting is suspended, it evokes a precarious, unstable, perhaps temporary balance, as if this fairy-tale world hid something else that is not revealed to us, and the viewer remains unable to read the work to the end and remains in them that veil of mystery that can excite us.