Lorenzo Bonechi

Lorenzo Bonechi was born in Figline Valdarno on 12 April 1955. He held his first exhibition in Figline Valdarno in 1979 and concentrated solely on painting as of 1982. He took part in group exhibitions in Italy, in Prato and San Giovanni Valdarno, in the USA, at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and in Akron (Ohio), in Great Britain at the Tate Gallery in London, in Japan at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and at the National Museum of Art in Osaka. His first solo show as a painter dates from 1985, held at Galleria Carini in Florence and then reproposed at the Fabian Carlsson Gallery in London and at the Sharpe Gallery in New York. At the same time, he was also interested in sculpture, which would become an integral part of his artistic research. Deeply attached to the land of his birth, he studied Tuscan fourteenth and fifteenth-century painting and sculpture, but also Byzantine and ancient Russian art, analysing their historical and literary roots. In 1987 he began the series of paintings Città Celesti, where he reinterpreted the topic of celestial Jerusalem through the ancient holy and philosophical sources, to then create basic geometrical constructions. This was followed by a series of solo exhibitions in Florence, Vienna, Gothenburg, Zurich and London. In 1993 he presented his solo show at the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York. In 1995, after being invited to the 46th Biennale Internazionale d’Arte in Venice he died suddenly in Figline Valdarno, at just 39 years old, on 23 November 1994. The Biennale nevertheless devoted two rooms of the Italian pavilion in the Giardini to him. In 1996 the Uffizi Gallery’s Department of Prints and Drawings dedicated an exhibition to him with works and materials donated by the artist in 1993. In 1997 a retrospective exhibition was put on in Valencia, Spain, in the Sala Parpalló at the Centro Cultural La Beneficència. In 2004, for the tenth anniversary of his death, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Palazzo Pretorio in Figline Valdarno, the town of his birth, organized a vast retrospective: Lorenzo Bonechi. Pittore di luce. In 2007 an exhibition of all his engravings was organized by the Valencia Museum of Fine Arts in the Centre del Carme (Spain) entitled Lorenzo Bonechi. Els Gravats. In 2009 the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato displayed his large work Conversazioni together with various preparatory drawings. In the same period at Terranuova Bracciolini, in Palazzo Concini, there would be a first exhibition dedicated to his sculpture and photography. In 2013 the Museo d’Arte Medievale e Moderna in Arezzo put on an exhibition of works by Lorenzo in dialogue with the ancient works housed there. At the end of 2014, for the twentieth anniversary of his death, there were two almost contemporary exhibitions, one at Palazzo Pretorio and the Chiesa dell’Antico Spedale Serristori, in Figline Valdarno, on angels and crucifixions, and the other in Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, L’attesa contemplativa, with his large paintings. In December 2016, a solo show opened with drawings, temperas and sculptures at Galleria Studio Tommasi in Florence. In May 2017, his oeuvre was displayed in the exhibition Incontro 2 together with Gianluca Sgherri at Galleria Filarete in Empoli. Between 2018 and 2019 a series of group exhibitions Dalla Gola del Leone took place, the last against the beautiful backdrop of the Oratorio di Santa Caterina, in Ponte a Ema (Florence). At the end of 2018 and start of 2019, a solo show Il cerchio e le nuvole. Lorenzo Bonechi o ‘della giovinezza’, a wide-ranging retrospective of his early works, was put on in Palazzo Pretorio in his hometown, Figline Valdarno. In February 2020 a study day was held on Lorenzo Bonechi at the Certosa in Florence entitled Lorenzo Bonechi (1955-1994) Dall’incanto di un febbrile silenzio. Starting on 3 April, Galleria Il Ponte in Florence is dedicating a solo show of paintings and large drawings to the artist.