(Arcangelo Esposito) Arcangelo Italian, 1956

Arcangelo Esposito (Avellino, Italy, 1956)

Arcangelo Esposito was born in Avellino in 1956 and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where he graduated in 1980. 

He moved permanently to Milan in 1981. That period saw the creation of his first cycle of works entitled “Terra mia”, with which he participated in the Perspective group exhibit at Art Basel. Dominated by dark and dramatic atmospheres created with poor, organic materials such as soil, charcoal and pure pigments, this series departs from the chromatic vivacity of his fellow Transavantgarde exponents.

“Terra mia” lays the foundation of the artist’s work through the elaboration of a gestural language, which turns the landscape into an abstract and, at the same time, sanguine and carnal vision of nature. The theme of Earth – the physical and spiritual place in which signs and symbols of the ancestral tradition gather – comes back also in the later cycles, enriched and amplified by intuitions and suggestions originated by the exploration of new cultural horizons.

In 1983 he exhibited for the first time at the Grandi Ombre group show, in Studio Artra, Milan.

The following year he realized his first exhibitions at the Galerie Tanit in Munich and the Galerie Buchmann in Basel.

He returned to Italy with two solo exhibitions in Modena in 1990 and 1991, before moving to Bologna until 1996.

His monograph, written by Walter Guadagnini, got published in 1997. 

He took part in the Quadriennali Foundation in Rome in 1986 and 1996. In 1999 he won ex aequo the first award at the 39th Premio Suzzara with the painting Misteri.

 In 2015 he received the Bugatti-Segantini prize for his artistic career.

Photo UniCredit Group (Sebastiano Pellion di Persano)