Luigi Ontani

Luigi Ontani was born in bologna in 1943. In the 1960s he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, and in the climate of general rejection of traditional techniques, Ontani alternated painting with experiments that drew on the childlike sphere of play, creating his tableaux vivants, filmed and photographed performances in which he himself appears in various guises: from Pinocchio to Dante, from San Sebastiano to Bacchus.

Luigi Ontani has contributed to the repositioning of the figurative language within contemporary artistic practices through photographs, performances, sculptures, installations and drawings that draw on a very rich tradition of both Western and Eastern images.

As well as taking part in the Venice Biennale in 1972, 1978, 1984, 1986 and 1995 and in the Lyon Biennale in 2000, Luigi Ontani has exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Venice, the Villa Stuck Museum in Munich, the Kunsthalle in Bern, the PS1 MoMA in New York, the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Kunstverein in Frankfurt, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, MAMbo in Bologna, Museo di Capodimonte in Naples and Castello di Rivoli in Turin.

He lives and works between Rome, Bologna and Bali.