back to PRESS PAGE

With her large white lid, oversized shades, and contented grin, the mysterious young lady in Giacomo Piussi’s Girl with Bucket Hat smiles contentedly against cool blue tones of sea and sky. Though the work may provoke viewers to ask who and where she is, her identity and location are not the point. Girl is part of the Italian painter’s seaside series where cartoon-like characters exist in bliss away from the weight of the world.

Rather than attempt realism, Piussi’s paintings playfully explore the intersection of dreams and contemporary life with delightfully straightforward aesthetics that have an immediate impact. 

“My work is simple: The subject matter is stripped to basics, and what remains is an icon with an aura of philosophical suspension, and a window into the enigma of existence. The drawings on which the paintings are built are precise and have the same aim as those made by cavemen, which was to give a shape to their desires, their dreams,” he says. 

Born in 1967 in Udine and raised in Florence, Piussi studied at the Institute d’Arte and completed his artistic education at Milan’s Brera Art Academy. Now a full-time Florentine, he pursues his passion for painting, bronze, terracotta sculpture, and bas-reliefs. 

Italian art of the Middle Ages informed Piussi as to how painting can communicate across barriers of low literacy as much as it did to inspire awe. “It is with that concept in mind that I make art, delivering a message simple and unambiguous. Tuscan early Renaissance painting had great influence in my upbringing as an artist,” he says.

Echoing Italian masters like Giotto and Paolo Uccello and even medieval illuminations (decorative embellishments, typically gold or silver, added to handwritten manuscripts, particularly books, to enhance their beauty and meaning), Piussi reaches the essence of humanity using naturalistic color and semi-abstract shapes in visions that are devoid of distracting details. 

“The characters I paint come in the form of essential shapes that relate to the geometric spaces created in the canvas more than to any pretense of realism or anatomical accuracy, he says. “The painting scene is organized in a matter-of-fact fashion, similar to an advertisement. The subjects are inspired by real life in a very loose way; some are made up or inspired by things I read or movies or art I see. What inspires me are people, their aura, how they inhabit the space around them, how they relate to one another visually. There’s always much to explore,” 

Piussi’s routine involves drawing frequently. Rather than using live models, he works from memory, highlighting peculiar qualities of a subject or a situation, after which he rearranges his compositions on canvas. Striking a balance between calculated and instinctive, his work is spontaneous and arresting. 

Piussi’s exhibition “Friends of Friends” will be on display at the Robin Rice Gallery in Hudson on July 12 through September 7. An opening reception will be held on July 12 from 5-7pm. 

Having exhibited in Florence, Rome, Milan, and Berlin, Piusi met Rice years ago and showed at her gallery in New York City in 2023. After numerous group shows at the Robin Rice Gallery, this is his second solo exhibition in Hudson.

“It’s a very nice town; it has that intact Edward Hopper atmosphere. I’m a big fan of the Hudson River school painters. I’ve seen those landscapes in the Brooklyn Museum many years ago, and I very much relate to that idealized portrayal of nature.”