The work of Domenico Gnoli cast a shadow of particular
inquiry to my view. After an initial search across the
world wide web, the avenue emblazoned with his eye.
(b Rome, 3 May 1933; d New York, 17 April 1970)
Italian painter and stage designer. His interest in art was
encouraged by his father, the art historian Umberto Gnoli,
and his mother, the painter and ceramicist Annie de Garon,
but his only training consisted of lessons in drawing and
printmaking from the Italian painter and printmaker
Carlo Alberto Petrucci (b 1881). After holding his first
one man exhibition in 1950, he studied stage design briefly
in 1952 at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome;
he enjoyed immediate success in this field, for example
designing a production of William Shakespeare’s
As You Like It for the Old Vic Theatre in London in 1955.
He then began to live part time in New York, where he began
to work as an illustrator for magazines such as Sports Illustrated.
During this period he drew inspiration from earlier art,
especially from master printers such as Jacques Callot
and Hogarth, from whom he derived his taste for compositions
enlivened by large numbers of figures stylized to the point
of caricature. In other works he emphasized the patterns
of textiles or walls, boldly succumbing to the seduction of
manual dexterity and fantasy in a style that was completely
out of step with the prevailing trends of the 1950s.
biography found here
you can read a swarm of goodness about him here
In 1962, a fairytale he had written and illustrated was
published in English as Orestes, or, the Art of Smiling.
L’opera grafica di Domenico Gnoli, which was published
by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore in 1985.
The below images are of a set of drawings dating from 1968,
and collectively entitled Bestiario Moderno, or,
Cos’è un mostro,
(What is a monster?)
These particular designs had first been printed in the 1983
volume about Gnoli published by FMR.
