Nerone Ceccarelli, Bas-relief in plywood and gilt brass, 1980s

Nerone Ceccarelli, signed.

Geometrical shape bas-relief in tinted plywood with applied gilt brass.

Work realized in the 1980s.

Signed “Nerone” and numbered “VI”.

Dimensions : H 90cm x W 180 cm x D 6 cm

Nerone Ceccarelli (1937-1996) , real named Giovanni Ceccarelli, was an Italian sculptor who worked all along his career on the interpenetration of architecture and art by creating artworks with rigorous geometrical abstraction. He began very young to create works and to exhibit them. In 1954, he lived between Venezia and Florence where he studied artists of the Italian Renaissance as Masaccio or Donatello and studied sculpture at the Florence Academy. At this period, he also studied constructivism and met the architect Carlo Scarpa who influenced him in his research of detail and the balance of the composition. In the middle of the 1950s, he abandoned figural painting to turn into abstraction and constructivism. From 1957, after his military service, he continued his researches about constructivism and Bauhaus. He also worked in the workshop of the sculptor and ceramist Victor Cerrato where he discovered new techniques of materials treatment which became fundamental in his later work. In 1962, he founded the NP2 group with his friend Gianni Patuzzi that gathered artists who wanted that Art, like sculpture and painting, takes part in the everyday life, the habitat, the urbanism and the society. Thereby, their workshop became a laboratory where they used every resource offered by modern technology – acid, blowpipe, electric welding – and material that might be industrially treated and integrated into modern architecture – concrete, steel, marble, and zinc, among others. In 1969, NP2 gained the “Bronze Level” awarded by the French architect’s committee for their artistic interventions in architecture.
In 1975, Gianni Patuzzi left NP2 and Nerone pursued it as an individual company called “Group NP2 / Nerone” which created artworks until 1988. Nerone showed a strong interest in industrial series production. He created in the 1960s the brand “Forme e Superfici” that permitted a group of artists to produce furniture and art items with functional shape ready to use.
All along his career, Nerone received public and private orders such as the Court building in Saluzzo, “El Conquistador” hotel in Porto Rico or the Governor palace in Dubaï. He used different materials and techniques often linked to metal and wood, treated in a way to obtain colors contrasts.