Ugo Nespolo

Italian painter Ugo Nespolo

Born in Biella, Italy, Ugo Nespolo is an Italian artist, film maker and writer. His work as an artist began in the 1960s, when, influenced by the pop trends that exploded in America at the same time, he began creating works that sought ironic and eclectic content.

Initially, his works recalled and explored the aspirations that artists from the Historic Avant-Garde, Futurism and Dadaism movements had combined with the increasingly emerging Pop Art.

Nespolo's fame in the 1960s grew, and he came to exhibit in major cities around the world, including New York and Chicago. His first Milan exhibition, entitled Machines and Conditional Objects, will be so groundbreaking that art critic Germano Celat will coin the Arte Povera movement.

His American interlude will be fundamental along with the European avant-garde legacy for the development of his artistic poetics, which owes much to the Futurist movement. It was during these years that he experimented with many different techniques such as embroidery and inlay of different materials

One of the pivotal concepts of Nespolo's artistic production is bringing art into everyday life; this will lead him to combine High and Low culture.

Nespolo's art is appreciated and recognized worldwide, so much so that he has participated in exhibitions at major museums such as the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Wanting to bring art into everyday life, Nespolo also counts among his collaborations those with the National Carabinieri Corps, for which he designed the historic calendar, and with Swatch, to celebrate 35 years since the brand was founded.

Ugo Nespolo's artistic language ranges from applied art to graphics to theater. On a practical level, Nespolo, seeks different artistic solutions by employing multiple materials such as wood, fabric and glass.

Ugo Nespolo and the Artists' Cinemas.

Among the initiators of the Cinema of Artists, Nespolo began directing numerous films that would feature numerous artists such as Lucio Fontana, Enrico Baj, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alighiero Boetti, Allen Ginsberg and Edoardo Sanguineti. The making of these films stemmed from numerous meetings in New York with personalities such as Yōko Ono, Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas.

The long series of films made by the artist began in 1966 with the film Grazie, Mamma Kodak, which was followed by others, making him a point of reference in Italy for Cinema d'Artista. Nespolo's films are so appreciated that they are shown in many international museums including: the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Fondazione Prada in Milan, and the Venice Biennale.

"I left with the Bell & Howell 16mm with Zoom Angenieux to discover cinema and I was lucky. At that time I was thinking of a kind of 'photographic theater' full of improvisations and bizarre materials. The attempt was to land in a magical territory and in perpetual, untiring movement, a game in short in which rationality was banished to give way to a free associative creation, sound and image, movement and color, sense and non-sense." - Ugo Nespolo

Ugo Nespolo and theater

A lover of experimentation, Nespolo's artistic production is not limited to works and films but also to sets and costumes for plays. It was in 1986 that he created the designs for the sets and costumes for the American premiere of Ferruccio Busoni's Turandot at the Stamford State Opera.

He later made the sets and costumes for Don Quixote staged at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome.

Ugo Nespolo: Works for sale with prices and value from Love Spot Galleries

For those interested in where to buy Ugo Nespolo, Love Spot Galleries offers a selection of the artist's works for sale online.

If interested in finding out about Ugo Nespolo's prices, value or which works will be on display at Love Spot Galleries please contact us by sending an e-mail to [email protected].