Luigi Perrella was born in Belvio (Como) on June 26th 1950 and now lives and works in Sistiana (Trieste). His education was completed when he graduated in aerospace engineering at the Milan Politecnico and obtained the relevant professional qualification in April 1997. His innate creative spirit had always driven him to seek out his existential identity in other spheres too, as witnessed by specific and recurrent figurative and expressive references. Almost unwittingly, by means of graphic/pictorial formulations of aesthetic-intimist synthesis, he began to outline a process of analytical psychological introspection about himself and the world around him. This iconographic progression historicised his linguistic-artistic development, while at the same time identifying increasingly unequivocably a need which became more pressing within him - more pressing in that in his most intimate self it became all-surrounding, captivating, intriguing and ultimately absolute; it was that need which in 1996 led him to declare openly and with irreversible resolution “I want to be a painter”.
In March 1997 Luigi Perrella thus began to participate in what became an increasingly dense series of events and exhibitions. In these collective and personal exhibitions paintings of various types bear witness to a narrative felicity steeped in light and colours, now gentle and subtle, now strong and impetuous. These works give form to emotions springing directly from a spirit which is sensitive to the ever-changing fascination of nature and its eternal flows, a nature whose essence, barely perceived, escapes in the perpetual interplay of the finite and the indefinite, the real and the unreal, the formal and the informal, in the closed labyrinth of life which always leaves an opening for hope, for light, for truth. Truth is perhaps the end that is pursued, sketched, lost and recovered by Perrelli with his blend of colour - harmonious, impalpable and suffused, at times violent, tortured and coagulated - as an essential synthesis, a diary of life, “in the need”, in his own words, “to leave a trace of oneself, for oneself, to historicise one’s existence, to describe one’s value, to assert the usefulness of having lived, to bear witness to one’s uniqueness”.
This is Luigi Perrella’s philosophy, but his work is above all painting, a point which is emphasised by Carmine Benincasa, lecturer in the history of art criticism, when he spurs him on to continue painting. “You have painting in the pulsional freedom of your body, of your gestures, your neuroses, your tenderness, your affable weaknesses.... Walk among violet and violet and among the rows of various greens, proceeding in white and blue, living from things which are simple, good and beautiful, like you.... This painting”, he goes on, “which does not make the world more real, but transforms colour and the telling of colour into reality.... This painting is the trace of daily life....”.
And this is the painting that Luigi Perrella seems to have fed on the atmospheres, luminosity and objective-plastic-oniric-symbolic-geometric-informal visions of a century of art history. He has perhaps breathed the enchanted magic of certain naif painting - with partiular reference to eastern Europe (and the landscapes of Ivan Rabuzin) - and re-lived Chagall’s oniric fabulism in the blinding light of the sun and the splendour of luxuriant nature; just as he has conceived a Mondrian-like harmonious and mathematical order, but one in which geometrical rigour is counterposed by a dimension of lyrical and symbolic inspiration with (here too) a naturalistic echo that sometimes goes beyond form and dilutes it in the sublimation of pure chromatic sensations; while in other ways the carefree but sure-handed simplicity of his linear dynamism could lead our thoughts to the eurythmic narrative felicity of Matisse.
Apart from the voices of authoritative critics like Benincasa, there are admirers among art enthusiasts who find philosophical values in his work. Ruggero Prazio finds in the theme of “migrating” flowers - one which recurs in many of Perrella’ works - a “metaphor of life” containing metaphysical intuitions: “What the painter seeks is transcendence, the vertical drive, the chance to solve life’s problems and answer its questions, tending towards that ‘recondite harmony’ that bears witness to the compromise between the anxiety to know oneself and the impossibility of answering oneself....”.
But Perrella’s questions are not confined to a sterile intellectual explanation, they become a chromatic narration of the essence, the connective tissue, of all things, tranfusing from and into him a cosmic combination of natural and transcendental universality whereby, through a kind of magic, spirit and matter coexist without intruding upon one another, in fact they strengthen each other. It is Perrella’s sparkling but solid spontaneity that conquers the spirit, the heart and the senses of the onlooker, it is this spontaneity that has produced the success of the many exhibitions that have travelled from Trieste to Paris, from Udine to Milan and Florence, Istanbul...

detailed collection file

Luigi Perrella’s works now feature in a great number of collections. This is an indication of just a few of them, enough to give an idea of the extent of the appreciation shown by those whose familiarity with and competence in the highest artistic and cultural values enable them to identify the special creativity and the original and true expression in his work.
The first collection is that of Carmine Benincasa, a lover of and expert on art, who has made this passion his profession. He is currently lecturer in the history of art criticism at the Architecture Faculty of La Sapienza University in Rome, formerly lecturer in art at the Univerity of Florence, he is a member of the Higher Council of the Italian Ministry of the Cultural and Environmental Heritage, art critic of the Corriere della Sera, co-publisher and artistic editor of the journal “Cahiers d’art”, drafter, designer and editor of the art collection series published by Seat in 1988 in a limited run of 3,000 copies, member of the Commission of the Venice Biennale, author of many essays and articles on 16th-century art (notably Controrinascimento e Manierismo) and 20th-century art and of essays on the leading figures in contemporary art. Carmine Benincasa was one of the first to believe in the colour and the hallmark of Luigi Perrella, to identify his artistic individuality, to canonise his work and to love it enough to include some of his paintings in his private collection, which comprises some of the most important names in modern and contemporary art, such as Rubens, Kandinski, Monet, De Chirico, Matisse, Cézanne, Balla, Masson, Guttuso and Schifano.
The works of Luigi Perrella are now to be found in the collections of some of the most prestigious art critics and cultural leaders in Italy. These include the collection of Etta Carignani di Novoli, which also features the work of Carnovali (Il Piccio), Cronach il Vecchio, the Veneto and Tuscan school, De Chirico and Guttuso. Besides being an art lover, Maria Enrichetta Melzi Carignani is a social, cultural and industrial leader at a national and international level. Since the list of positions of responsibility she occupies would be too long for a presentation of this sort, suffice it to say here that she is co-owner of the Gruppo Weissenfels, a world leader in various fields of industry, member of the Board of Directors of the Organizzazione Tipografica Editoriale (her family is the largest shareholder of the daily newspapers Il Piccolo and Messaggero Veneto), Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, National President of A.I.D.D.A. (Associazione Imprenditrici e Donne Dirigenti d’Azienda - the Italian businesswomen’s association), World Vice President of the F.C.E.M. (Femmes Chefs d’Entreprises Mondiales - the international businesswomen’s association with 33,000 women entrepreneurs the world over) and Honorary French Consul in Trieste.

artitalia s.r.l.
novembre 1998

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I quadri di Perrella non sono belli, possono sedurre molto; però hanno il sapore della pittura, come deve essere la pittura; la pittura non deve essere nè buona nè bella: deve essere pulcrum, deve essere bellezza... deve essere luce restando materia.
Questo riesce a fare Perrella; è una pittura che è un labirinto, perchè invece di introdurre sul mondo apre e spalanca una finestra sull'interno, sulla coscienza, sul cuore.
Ed allora è in realtà una pittura trappola questa di Perrella; è una pittura che fa finta di nominare e ricapitolare il nome del mondo e delle cose del mondo, siano essi i fiori o altre cose... o ruderi o addirittura esplosioni quasi da big bang, ma in realtà registra attentamente, come in un sismografo, le variazioni di una tenera passione di un uomo che, dovendo costruire il mondo come ingegnere, in realtà costruisce il suo castello di sabbia sul mondo e all'interno della coscienza... e quindi i suoi fantasmi... ci racconta come nel suo cuore legge il mondo, come il suo cuore interpreta le cose e quindi è una pittura che rimanda e rinvia su un altro tipo di verità, su una passione: sulla passione del cuore dell'artista dinnanzi al colore.
E quindi è una pittura che si dondola in un'altalena, tra coscienza e mondo, tra cuore e cose del mondo, le cose più prossime: quelle del quotidiano; una pittura giocata su una passione d'amore, perchè ognuno di noi legge ed interpreta il mondo con il cuore che ha, ma soprattutto una pittura che riconosce, rifonda, ricomincia da capo a creare il mondo secondo il fantasma del cuore.
Questo è bello! Viene restituita la primarietà al soggetto, cioè l'artista; all'artista che si pone dinnanzi alla pittura con le sue cadute, con le sue tensioni, con i suoi voli, con i suoi precipizi, con i suoi errori... finalmente una pittura che sia pittura.
La pittura non è mai una questione di volontà tra colui che vuol dipingere e la pittura stessa; ci sono artisti che amano talmente la pittura che si vede, ma la pittura non ama loro: Perrella sì, la pittura lo porta... lo porta, lo ingoia, lo raggruma, lo coccola e... richiede l'assoluto, è come la luce la pittura, la pittura è una materia che diventa luce restando materia, questa è la straordinaria impossibile verità: bisogna restare materia diventando luce, così come bisogna diventare spirito restando corpo, nella nostra storia: quindi la pittura richiede l'assoluto e dipende dall'ubbidienza, dalla disciplina, dalla fedeltà che Perrella sa dare alla pittura.
E’ iniziata una stagione molto importante per Perrella; ho assistito alle trasmutazioni, alle trasformazioni della sua pittura nel giro di due anni, vorticose, vorticose... più si è donato alla pittura più la pittura riappariva piena di... piena di pittura: la pittura non esprime altro che sè stessa...
Carmine Benincasa

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