Lugano
Luigi Ontani is an Italian painter and sculptor, exponent of the body art. He was born in Vergato, Bologna, in 1943. From the 1970’s on Ontani started his artistic research, experimenting various techniques (photography, painting, sculpture on different materials) and using his own body to investigate the ambiguity and the complexity of human nature. Ontani has used all these different techniques as an occasions to experiment new possibilities and formulate new variations of the themes and subjects that interest him the most: his own “transhistoric” travel through myth, the mask, the symbol and iconographic representation. He has exhibited his works in some of the most important museums and galleries of the world, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to the Centre Pompidou, the Museo Reina Sofía to the Frankfurter Kunstverein. He has also participated in several editions of the Venice, Sydney, and Lyon biennales. He held three important retrospectives at the MoMA (2001), the SMAK in Ghent (2003–2004) and the MAMbo in Bologna (2008).
