Angelo Savelli Basically White Series, Texas Triangle

Alexandra Nechita "Your Guitar my music" 1997 Print - Lithograph on handpulled on Archival Paper in Paris 41.5'' x 34.5'' in Paris. Edition: Signed in pencil and marked 131/250 From ...

Embark on a captivating journey to a time teeming with rich tales, legendary creatures, and exceptional craftsmanship. Introducing our Bone Inlaid Celtic Dragon Wall Art...

Steven Colucci’s iconoclastic approach to performance and the visual arts have not only long blurred the boundaries between these disciplines, but have challenged its most basic assumptions. The title of this show references a most rudimentary dance move -- the plié -- and our assumptions of what to expect in relation to this. Also the suggestion that we can simply press a button and a preconceived outcome will be courteously delivered -- a form of prefabricated belief in itself. Steven Colucci’s artwork turns such basic assumptions on their heads. Finding early inspiration in the New York school of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock with his action painting, and then further by his professor -- a then young Vito Acconci while studying at the School of Visual Arts, Steven Colucci went from exploring the raw existentialist experimentation of New York’s early painting and performance scenes, to investigating the other end of the spectrum -- the rigorously measured and controlled disciplines of pantomime and ballet; studying in Paris under the tutelage of world-famous Marcelle Marceau, and engaging with the concepts of dramatic movement pioneer and intellectual Etienne Decroux. Colucci has explained the difference between the extremes of pantomime and dance as being that pantomime forces movement via an internal capacity -- movement directed inward to the core of one’s self -- a source requiring extreme mental and physical control. Dance by contrast is an external expression; likewise requiring great precision, although instead an extension of self or sentiment that projects outwardly. While such historical ‘movement’ disciplines serve as foundation blocks for Steven’s artistic explorations, it is the realm in between that he is best known for his contributions -- an experimental movement and performance art that simultaneously honors, yet defiantly refutes tradition; rejecting a compartmentalization regarding art and movement, yet incorporating its elements into his own brand of experimental pastiche. Colucci’s performance works manifest as eerily candy-coated and familiar, yet incorporate unexpected jags of the uncanny throughout, exploiting a sort of coulrophobia in the viewer; an exploration of a cumulative artifice that binds human nature against its darker tendencies; highlighting traditions of artifice itself -- the fabricated systemologies that necessitate compartmentalization in the first place. It is evident in Steven Colucci’s paintings that he has established a uniquely distinctive pictorial vocabulary; a strong allusion to -- or moreso an extension of -- his performance works. Colucci’s paintings depict a sort of kinetic spectrum, or as he refers to them “a technical expression of physicality and movement”. Whereas the French performance and visual artist Yves Klein used the human body as a “paint brush” to demarcate his paintings and thereby signify a residue of performance, Colucci’s utilization of nonsensical numbers and number sequences taken from dance scores, as well as heat-induced image abstraction depicting traces of movement likewise inform his vocabulary. In the strand of the choreographed, yet incorporating moments of chance, Colucci’s paintings represent an over arching structure; a rhythm of being and state, yet detail erratic moments -- moments that denote a certain frailty -- the edge of human stamina. Colucci’s paintings dually represent a form of gestural abstraction -- and also the reverse of this -- a unique anthropomorphization of varying states of movement -- that sometimes present as a temperature induced color field, at others are juxtapositions of movement and depictions of physical gestural images themselves. Colucci’s use of vernacular and found materials such as cardboard evoke his mastery of set design, and also reference a sort of collective experience of urbanity and the ephemeral. Such contradictions seem to permeate not only Steven Colucci’s artwork, but also are reflected in his person -- one who grew up in New York’s Bronx during a zeitgeist moment in visual and performing arts in the 1960s -- one who shifts with ease from happenings and experiments in New York City, to his meticulously choreographed megaproductions at Lincoln Center or starring in the Paris ballet...

Part of the Little Man Series by Steven Colucci - Mixed media / Acrylic and chalk. Steven Colucci was born to an Italian family in the South Bronx, near Yankee Stadium. His father owned and operated the dry cleaning service used by New York Giants. Colucci remembers sharing dinners with legendary athletes like Tucker Frederickson, Rosey Grier, Jim Brown and Frank Gifford. At 12 years old, he was diagnosed with severe dyslexia and forced to enroll at New York University Reading Institute, a small-private school in the East Village. During his years at NYU Reading Institute, he was encouraged to express himself through painting; he became particularly in representing movements through paint and carefully studied the works of John Marin, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. After finishing the program at NYU Reading Institute, Colucci returned to William Taft high school in the Bronx, and remained focused on painting and won a scholarship to the School of Visual Arts. After graduating with the B.A. in painting, he moved to Paris to continue his studies in art and movement. It was in Paris that he began to study pantomime and ballet under the tutelage of world-famous movement artist Etienne Decroux. Decroux worked with him honing his talent, until he was discovered by Marcel Marceau in the late 70s. Marceau had few protégés, and Colucci quickly became one of them. For the next decade under Marceau’s instruction, he developed his own artistic voice and style. In the 1980s, he moved back to New York where he developed a dance and mime program, which offered one-on-one workshops with the world-renowned dancers and musicians like Martin VanHamel, Kevin McKenzie, Dennis Koster, Gerald Busby and more. He brought his workshop to numerous colleges across the United States including Bard College, nationally recognized for its prestigious arts program and the Philadelphia Art Museum. Ronal Wilford, President of Columbia Artists Management, recognized Colucci’s work as high art. Between 1980s and 1990s he was asked to collaborate with various dancers and artists including Alvin Ailey, Melba Moore, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Julio Iglesias...

Vibrant abstract color lithograph #3 by Angelo Savelli, Italian, 1991-1995. Color lithograph executed on thick paper. Pencil signed and numbered by the artist. Framed in a simple, clean lined black lacquered wooden gallery frame. Savelli lived in Italy until 1953, when he moved to New York City, where he spent most of his life. Once in New York City, he became friends with all of the abstract greats, including Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt and Barett Newman. He shared studio space and worked with Franz Kline and William Dekooning...

Vibrant Abstract Color Lithograph #2 by Angelo Savelli, Italian, 1991-1995. Color lithograph executed on thick paper. Pencil signed and numbered by the artist. Framed in a simple, cl...

Vibrant Abstract Color Lithograph #4 by Angelo Savelli, Italian, 1991-1995. Color lithograph executed on thick paper. Pencil signed and numbered by the artist. Framed in a simple, cl...

Vibrant Abstract Color Lithograph #1 by Angelo Savelli, Italian, 1991-1995. Color lithograph executed on thick paper. Pencil signed and numbered by the artist. Framed in a simple, cl...