SEEDS OF LOVE  

​

NEW PAINTINGS BY MICHEL LEONARDI 

​

This spring exhibition takes us on a journey through an intricate network of polychrome ellipses, inspired by the artist's experiences, practices and experiments. Some of these organic forms, sparkling with colour, evoke the germination of seeds and the fecundity of life. Others celebrate unexpected beauty and subtle poetry. 

Michel Leonardi invites us to follow his own sensibility, guiding us in the contemplation of his works and the exploration of his awakened emotions. His work develops a line of thought inspired by the painter Hermann Amann (1934-2020), leader of the movement "Nouvelle Pigmentation" created in 1986, whose work sought to penetrate the energy of colour. Leonardi joined this movement from its very inception, together with Madeleine and Roland Weber, Jean-Luc Herman, and Gil J. Wolman, and has remained attached to it throughout his career. The work of this group is being promoted by Lionel Spiess, Galerie Spiess Seconde Modernité, Paris. 

Where painting develops its own existence, an autonomous pictorial language free of any narrative expression blossoms in his work. He is positively obsessed with the initial forms of microscopic elements that develop into an organism. Bacteria, spores, germs, the first stages of plants, all in motion, this is Michel Leonardi's vision of the world. His work is a dialogue between colour and light, between organic painting and geometric abstraction. 

The artist comments: "In the company of Stéphanie Tourrette and Robert Klotz, true amateurs sensitive and attentive to pictorial and graphic language, I have chosen a coherent group of works on canvas and paper, a cycle devoted to a theme that has preoccupied me since the beginning of what I could describe as my entry into colour". 

Born in 1951 and a graduate of the Ecole Supérieure des Arts de Liège, Michel Leonardi started to work as a visual artist in the early 1970s. Since then, he has managed to strike a delicate balance between his varied yet converging activities. As an artist and interior designer, he has developed his plastic and lithographic research while integrating his art works into private and public spaces, initially in his home region of Liège and in Luxembourg, then moving on to Asia, where he is regularly called upon to work. 

Most recently, Michel Leonardi co-curated the exhibition "PEINDRE LA COULEUR - Mouvement(s) de la couleur en Europe - Le Regard des Collectionneurs" and produced an interactive installation for "Le Bruit de la Couleur - Exposition Itinérante d'art contemporain", both presented at La Châtaigneraie, Centre Wallon d'Art Contemporain. His personal art collection was part of the major exhibition "Private Views" in 2023 at La Boverie in Liège. 

We are delighted to present a selection of new paintings by this major player on the Liège art scene. The shapes and colours of these works coincide perfectly with the approaching springtime, the season of renewal.  

​

Text: Anosone Sygnavong/Michel Leonardi

​

​

​

​