Luciano Ventrone was born in Rome in 1942
and moved to Denmark at the age of six, where he hosted
by Lady Metha Petersen - a wealthy and most of all a
lovely woman who lavished him with gifts. Among them was
a box of colored pencils…and from that time colors have
shaped his life.
Returning to Italy after his compulsory
education and due to his family situation, Ventrone had
several jobs but nevertheless, in 1960 he managed to
attend Arts school in Rome. After graduating in 1964, he
studied Architecture until 1968 and then joined the
student protests and decides to abandon his studies and
dedicate his life to painting – which he never abandoned
and was his only source of income at that time.
His life drawings were published in the
Academic book ("Human anatomy - the central nervous
system") written by Prof. Gastone Lambertini of
Cattolica University in Rome.
Ventrone confronts himself with all the
main issues of contemporary art, until he arrives to
Realism. With an article published in 1983 on the
Italian magazine “L’Espresso”, Antonello Trombadori
motivated art critic Federico Zeri to get closer to
Ventrone who, under suggestion of Zeri, takes a new path
with still life. From this point on, Ventrone starts a
life-long journey inside all the aspects of Nature,
always capturing more and more details that are almost
invisible to our eyes, which nowadays are exposed to
millions of images.
As he liked to tell to his selected
students: painting is not about the mere representation
of an object, it’s about color and light. The right
proportions between those two elements form a shape
inside the space. The subject cannot be seen as it is
but as an abstract element. |