Luca Leonelli is an Italian painter, engraver and architect. He was born in 1951 in Modena, and until recently has combined his work as a painter with directing an architectural studio.
His extremely rich artistic production ranges from engravings in various techniques — from etching, drypoint and aquatint to mezzotint, — large-scale oilpainting, drawing, watercolours, and numerous special editions, such as single illustrated books and volumes. Among the many themes with which he has engaged over the years are the Old God, Eros and Thanatos, the relation between mankind and animals, and mankind and the environment, insects and swarms, individuals and crowds, the power of classification, and the effects of time and experience on the human body and mind.
From 1990 onwards, he has presented a fraction of his oeuvre of 250+ engravings in about ten collections: from Naturalia (1990), via Angoli Vivi In Ordine Sparso (2003), Il Fiore Più Bello (on orchids, 2005), and Esercizi di Fisiognomica (edited by Gabriele Mazzotta, 2008), to A spasso con Spinosa, Breton e Trotsky (edited by Giorgio Upiglio, 2010).
Over the last decades Luca Leonelli has developed a collaboration with the atelier of Giorgio Upiglio (Arte Grafica Uno, Milan), who now prints the majority of his works. Several prominent Italian art critics have engaged with his work and written texts for his oevre, including Franco Basile, Giancarlo Boiani, Giorgio Celli, Claudio Ceritelli, Philippe Daverio, Franco Farina, Raffaele De Grada, Mario de Micheli, Mattia Moreni, Antonello Negri, and Arturo Schwarz.
His art has been displayed in private and public galleries in Italy and abroad, such as Palazzo Comunale (Modena), Die Optiker Gallery, Galleria Pinna and Galerie Kik (Berlin), Ermanno Tedeschi Gallery (Turin), Fondazione Mudima, Palazzo Durini, Il Mercante di Stampe, and the Bocca and Feltrinelli libraries (Milan), among many others. Works have also been exposed at art festivals such as the Premio Suzzara (where his oilpainting 5 pm won him the 1997 People's Choice Award) and the Premio Michetti (which he won in 2006 for his oil painting Giano (Janus)). Several public institutions and museums showcase his large-scale oil paintings or have his collection of art editions in their permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art of Tel Aviv, Palazzo Durini (Milan), and the Michetti Foundation (Francavilla Al Mare).