Sergio Vacchi, Italian painter, Died at 90

  Artists

Sergio Vacchi was born on April 1, 1925, in Castenaso, Bologna and died on January 14, 2016.

He was an Italian painter.

He quit his studies in law to pursue his passion for painting.

Vacchi was a self-taught artist, in 1951 he held his first solo exhibition in Milan at the prestigious Galleria del Milione.

Following a period close to post-cubism, between the year 1956 and 1962 he embraced the informalism.

In the early 1960s, he relocated to Rome, and there he began a cycle of gouaches and paintings collectively known as Il Concilio (i.e. “The Council”), which raised large controversies with the Roman Catholic Church because of their grotesque and sometimes blasphemous representation of the church.

After Vacchi was invited to the Venice Biennale in 1964, the patriarch of Venice forbade Catholics to visit his room.

Following some cues present in Il Concilio, Vacchi embraced a new art movement, known as Nuova Figurazione (“New Figuration”), of which the first significant example was Morte di Federico II di Hohenstaufen.

Next the painting cycles Galileo Galilei semper and Pianeta followed.

In the 1990s, Vacchi devoted himself to cycles of portraits and self-portraits, and particularly to Greta Garbo’s portraits.

In 1997, Sergio Vacchi left to Siena, where he founded the foundation Fondazione Vacchi.

Sergio Vacchi stopped painting in the late 2000s, because of the Parkinson’s disease that had affected him.

Sergio Vacchi passed away at 90 yrs old.