Domenico Gnoli (1933–1970) a successful illustrator and set designer who lived between Paris, New York and Rome, turned to painting full time late in his brief life. He created large canvases that featured close-up details of seemingly everyday objects and sights as the pearl buttons on a woman’s chemise, the pocket of a man’s trouser, the part in a head of raven hair, and the empty pillow on a just-made bed. He also produced exquisitely detailed black-and-white renderings of chimerical beasts in everyday settings — sitting on a sofa, or in the back of a limo. With superficial connections to Pop Art, Gnoli's work drew upon influences as far afield as Surrealism and the art of the Quattrocento to produce monumental portraits of desire and absence.
"Domenico Gnoli" at Luxembourg & Dayan - including more than 15 of the 83 paintings made in the last five years of the artist's life, as well as drawings and examples of the his poems and letters - will be the first U.S. exhibition devoted to Gnoli since 1969, when Sidney Janis Gallery presented his breakthrough New York City exhibition. The artist died several months later in March 1970, just shy of his 37th birthday.