Luigi Rocca: Masterworks from Public and Private Collections

A 1" tear to dustjacket. Text in Italian and English. Luigi Rocca was born on December 26, 1952 in Porpetto, Italy. His father, a teacher, understood that this youthful talent should be encouraged from the start. When he was five or six years old, Luigi shaped plaster and clay, reproducing many characters belonging to a child?s world. In 1966, at the age of thirteen, he took the first prize in an international fair for young painters at Jesolo. When he was fifteen, he attended art school at the Art Academy where he completed his apprenticeship. Rocca participated in exhibitions with great success in Lignano, Sabbiadoro, Jesolo, and along the Adriatic Coast, winning two first prizes and two third prizes. Painters from the Renaissance through Impressionism fascinated the artist. Looking at the past, with a special eye for the present, he painted figures, flowers and landscapes of great simplicity and interest. Flowers were especially important to him as they breathed the same atmosphere of tenderness and veiled sensuality in which his female figures were enveloped. Beginning in the early 1980s, Rocca joined his classically trained technique with his interest in America, specifically New York City, and his study of American Photorealists; producing stunning images of American metropolitan icons, such as diners, taxis, and cityscapes. Rocca once said of his work, The cradle of art brings the emotional charge of the Old Masters to the newness of the Americas, showing us the warmth and potency of a compelling city.…