The inauguration is set for Saturday, May 18 at 6 PM, in the Palatine Chapel of the Maschio Angioino in Naples, “Ronnie Cutrone. WHAT A…KRAZY LIFE!”, the retrospective dedicated to the great American Pop Art artist, who passed away in 2013.
The exhibition, conceived and produced by Matteo Lorenzelli for Lorenzelli Arte, in collaboration with BlackArt and Black Tarantella and with the Municipality of Naples and the University of Naples L’Orientale, traces the entire career of the New York artist, among the animators of Andy Warhol’s Factory and his assistant for a decade. For the first time in Naples, this retrospective curated by Roberto Borghi, Ivan Quaroni, Luca Palermo, and Carla Travierso will remain on display at Castel Nuovo until August 4, 2024, and can be visited for free from Monday to Saturday.
Through a careful selection of 24 works of various sizes created by Ronnie Cutrone, from the early ’80s to 2010, some of his most iconic canvases will be reviewed, depicting comic book characters and cartoons, snippets of advertisements, and continuous references to the American flag.
Born in 1948 in New York City, Ronnie Cutrone was one of the most influential figures of the New Pop Art. He belongs to the first generation of American artists whose visual education was shaped by television, Hollywood myths, advertising, rock music, and mass media. Thanks to his studies at the School of Visual Art in New York from 1966 to 1970, Cutrone came into contact with the New York artistic avant-garde, working as Warhol’s assistant from 1972 and contributing to the creation of many pop works of the time. His participation in the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” show, where he danced on stage with the Velvet Underground and Nico, is famous.
In this exhibition there are several works representative of his career: displayed are some of the works from the “Quilt” series, which feature comic book characters embroidered on traditional American quilts, as in the case of “The Phantom” (1996).
Cartoon characters are the undisputed protagonists of his works but the irony of Cutrone’s works also clashes with the dramatic events that affect the reality of his country. The retrospective includes, in fact, a selection of works like “Crusade” (2005), in which the shapes of a lipstick and a bullet are juxtaposed to evoke their unexpected similarity, and the cycle of the “Red cross” (2002), crosses painted on canvas.
In the Palatine Chapel will also be displayed “Birden”, one of the first works created by the artist in Italy on an Italian flag, on the occasion of the Cutrone exhibition at the gallery of Lucio Amelio, in 1982. And “Off the Rack, By the Slice, Mix&Match” (2010) the last work by Ronnie Cutrone made in Italy for his solo show in Milan.
The works of Ronnie Cutrone are part of collections of international institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, and other important galleries and museums around the world, including the contemporary art collection of the Reggia di Caserta. His works are also part of the private collections of Cindy Crawford, Elle McPherson, Naomi Campbell, and Claudia Schiffer.
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