Born in Naples in 1933, he studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples In 1958 (along with Biasi, Di Bello, Fergola, Luca and Persico) he founded the Gruppo 58, which was linked with the Movimento Nucleare, directed by Enrico Baj in Milan, as well as the magazine Documento Sud, a review of art and avant-garde culture He then spent some time in Matera, where apart from painting, he worked as teacher of ceramics in the Martella Atelier, which had been set up by the Cascella brothers and the architect Quaroni He also decorated the dome of St Anthony’s Church in Stigliano, near Matera, with a picture measuring 80 square metres
In 1960 he moved to Milan at the invitation of Enrico Baj and Arturo Schwarz: he had a one-man exhibition in the Galleria Schwarz and received a Carnegie International Award at Pittsburg In the same year he had his first solo exhibition in New York…
In 1962 he held a seminar on his own research as part of Eugenio Battisti’s course at Genoa University He designed interiors in collaboration with numerous architects
In 1964, together with other artists, including Baj and Fontana, he created the Labirinto del Tempo Libero for the Thirteenth Milan Triennale and was awarded one of the major prizes He also took part in the Thirty-second Venice Biennale He then moved to Paris, where he lived in Max Ernst’s old studio
He participated in the Thirty-third Venice Biennale in 1966 with his own personal room Lucio Del Pezzo created a stainless steel bas-relief, designed for a building by Gio Ponti in Milan He was invited as visiting professor for a year to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
In 1967 he was involved in the organisation of the exhibition De Metaphisica in the Kruger Gallery in Geneva, where he exhibited along with De Chirico, Carrà, Morandi, De Pisis, Sironi and Gnoli
He had his first one-man exhibition in Paris in 1968; the French State purchased two of his works for the Sala Metafisica of Grenoble Museum (De Chirico, Max Ernst, Herbin, Carrà, Nevelson and Del Pezzo) and commissioned two large outdoor statues for an architectural/scholastic complex
In 1969 Lucio Del Pezzo was invited to Cuba to the World Peoples’ Festival where he presented his sculpture La tomba di MaratArturo Carlo Quintavalle was curator of a retrospective of his work at Parma University in 1970 He began to work as graphic designer for Olivetti and later with the automobile group Renault Italia
In 1973 he created a work (Il muro 120 x 3,5 m) for the Paris Pompidou Centre, which covered two sides of the fencing around the Beaubourg building-site
In 1974 Milan City Council dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him at the Rotonda della Besana, curator Guido Ballo
In 1978, Italsider Steelworks of Taranto put on a dedicated to his serial production (multiples and prints) and commissioned a number of iron sculptures
In 1979 Lucio Del Pezzo returned to Italy definitively, setting in Milan
During the Eighties he designed stage sets for: the opera, Samarcanda by E Schatz, which was put on in the gardens of Milan Modern Art Museum; for an ancient music concert in the cloisters of the All Saints Church in Florence; and for a production of the opera, La festa del Principe by Lambertini and Barra at the Vesuvian Festival in Ercolano
In 1988 he was invited by the Union of Russian Artists to show, together with twenty other Italian artists, at the Moscow Arts Palace
In 1990 he designed the sets for the ballet A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged at the Valli Theatre in Reggio Emilia and at the Verdi Theatre in Parma
In 1991 he was invited to Japan where the architect Alhadeff commissioned a sculpture for the Sunstar Company in Osaka He had a solo exhibition, Omaggio ad Andrea Mantegna in Mantegna’s House in Mantua
He made trips to India, Nepal and Polynesia
In 1998 he was commissioned by the architect Marco Zanuso to paint a large picture for the Milan HQ of fashion house Ferré
In 2000 the Mathildenhohe Institute in Darmstadt put on the first large retrospective of his work in Germany
In 2001 he designed four large ceramic bas-reliefs and a bronze sculpture for two Naples underground stations Lucio Del Pezzo died in Milan on April 12 2020
