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Giancarlo Pucilli

Surf Artist

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Giancarlo Pucilli

Civitavecchia, Rome, Italy

Giancarlo Pucilli was born in 1944 in a tiny village on the hills near Rome. Twenty-year-old, he moved to Civitavecchia, a little sea town on the north seaside of Rome, where he still lives. The rural and marine surroundings where he lived produced the deep love for the nature that can found in the soft and suggestive atmospheres of his artworks.

He did more than a hundred expositions around Italy and signed many book covers. In 2004, national airline Alitalia chose him for the cycle of expositions 'Alitalia per l'Arte', starting with a long personal exposition in the VIP hall of Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

Since 2000 Giancarlo Pucilli has volunteered at the solidarity center 'Il Ponte' of Civitavecchia, Rome, where he teaches fine arts to the teenage guests of the center, taking them to the discovery of the art history by frequent visits to the museums in Rome. Newspapers and magazines have written about him: SurfNews, Revolt Magazine, Safari Magazine Japan, and others Italian heads like Il Tempo, Il Messaggero, Avvenire, Corriere della Sera, Il Torchio, La Sponda, Arte Mercato, L'Elité, Catalogo degli Artisti, Il Quadrato and Bolaffi.

"…When I was a child, i liked to scan the horizon, the blue tones of the sky spaced out by the soft masses of the clouds, the run after each other of the hills beautifyed by vineyards and orchards, worked by the skilled embroiderer's hand more than the hand of a man; as a student I had the luck to 'meet' Cezanne, Monet, Renoir… And I fell in love with impressionism, sharing the wish to pick the moment that passes, the wind gust, the lights and the shadows, the multible reflections on the water; I adored to paint 'en plain air' with clear brush-strokes and crossed, with bright colours often strengthened by the matching of complementary.

In the sixties I participated in a lot of extemporary expositions which, at that time, filled up the festivals' calendars of the villages around Rome; I took off with my red scooter with canvases, colour's box and country easel, some on my shoulder, others knotted to the scooter, chased by the worried look of my mother. Pictorally, I formed in that years, painting side by side with artists of all ages and art tendences, setting up enduring friendships which I still remember with love and deep gratitude. My painting of today is the fruit of all that ranks and lots of little secrets about the colour, the diluents, the mixtures, which I snatched everytime observing works of the artists that was, for me, 'great masters'.

Than I found the sea: that boundless blue expanse, now indigo, now cobalt, now emerald, on which the colours of the sky are reflected; never the same during the hours, the days or the months; every instant is an unrepeatable magic moment, especially when, in the days after a huge swell, after a seeming quiet, the sea takes strength again, standing up in impressive, huge waves that, showing an intense, whiteness hair, overturn on themselves in a deafening rumble, dispersing in a thousand trickles; a deep emotion that you can't retain pervade me: I must express it, shout it, share it; at this moment born an uncontrollable yearning to paint the waves, always a new challenge between the beauty of their colours, their scent, the wind gusts that graze you and I try to fix them on a canvas. I don't care about the artistic value of my works. What I find absolute in value is the moment I succeed to give life to those retained emotions.

I can't imagine a Heaven without the sea, but maybe I wonder, a share of the Heaven is just in that boundless blue expanse, where I spent with my sons all the best moments of my father life, transferring to them the love and respect for all the sea gives us, sharing the best emotions, deepening the knowledge of the marine flora and fauna.

Every time I watch the sea, quiet and silent or rough under the movement of the waves, or also the light and delicate flight of the seagulls, an uncontrollable wish to paint pervades me, so also the stories of my sons and their friends, back from every surf trip, give me an incredible charge, what lots of people call 'inspiration' that push me to put one, two or three clean canvas' on the the easel and to squeeze my oils on the palette and to begin a new wonderful timeless challenge, without winners and losers, always with the same emphasis, I try to recreate the deafening rumble of the waves, the dazzling white of the foam, steaming under the offshore wind.".

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