A Fellini of the Brush

The Daily Pic: Domenico Gnoli had a comic take on Italian home life

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Domenico Gnoli's "Striped Trousers," from 1969 (left) and his "Woman's Bust in Pink" from 1966.

Domenico Gnoli's "Striped Trousers," from 1969 (left) and his "Woman's Bust in Pink" from 1966 (Courtesy Luxembourg and Dayan, New York, and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome)

I think of Domenico Gnoli as the anti-Morandi. Gnoli, an Italian artist who died in 1970, when he was only 36,  depicts the faintly comic reality of petit-bourgeois life in post-war Italy. There’s more than a hint of Fellini in these two paintings of embodied clothes, on view in a rare Gnoli show at Luxembourg and Dayan in New York.  Whereas Giorgio Morandi, as I’ve argued before, seems to deny that side of his life – thus revealing it even more fully as a faintly oppressive force.

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