Lorenzo Puglisi

In his most recent works Lorenzo Puglisi reinterprets masterpieces of art history and icons from the collective visual memory. With the painting Il Grande Sacrificio, the Italian artist shares his reverence for his colleague Leonardo da Vinci and his famous Last Supper. This volume uses sketches and preliminary studies to document Puglisi’s homage, which is painted on a wood panel six meters long: strong brushstrokes of white paint on an otherwise black background emphasize only the faces and gestures of Jesus and his apostles, revealing the unique network of relationships in da Vinci’s iconic painting.

Il Grande Sacrificio will be exhibited in Milan to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death—on the other side of the wall upon which the Last Supper hangs in Santa Maria delle Grazie church.

With their deep black backgrounds and lightning-fast gestures in white, the works of Lorenzo Puglisi (born in 1971 in Biella, Italy) explore the painterly representation of reality from the Renaissance to the present day. He lives in Bologna.