Nel Profondo (2024) Drawing by Nicola De Luca

Born in 1953 in Torre di Ruggiero, where he still lives and works, Nicola De Luca discovered from an early age his innate gift: perfectly reproducing what the eye sees. This ability led him to undertake studies at the Liceo Artistico of Reggio Calabria, where, as a pupil of Leo Pellicanò, he refined his aesthetic sensitivity and acquired awareness of his expressive possibilities and those that the world of art holds within its internal. But the multifaceted personality of the young De Luca wants to open up to new freedoms and to engage with artistic expressions different from those learned from school teaching. Then, in 72 after completing his high school studies, he moved to Naples and enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture. In the suggestive Neapolitan city De Luca experiences within himself a becoming of intuitions, curiosities and sensitive discoveries. He establishes a collaboration as a light designer with a small experimental theater company. At the same time he turns his attention towards light as an incorporeal but nevertheless architectural entity. Thus he began to become interested in photography, one of the expressive means favored by the artists of those years, initially as a mere reference for his drawn subjects, then as a language in its own right. Preferring black and white which he personally takes care of during the development and printing phase. The contact with photography would later prove to be very important for his artistic evolution.
In 1980, after obtaining his degree, he left the city where his training took place and returned definitively to his hometown. Since then he has successfully practiced the profession of architect alongside an intense drawing and pictorial production of a figurative nature.
His latest works, born from an in-depth analysis of the masterpieces of ancient and modern masters of Italian figurative culture, appear to us as wonderful exercises in style that calm the gaze and shake the soul. Despite having an eclectic talent that allows him to range with great ease between various artistic techniques, to give shape to his feeling as an artist he chose drawing as a language, because it is more suited to his expressive abilities and more suitable to the contents to be transmitted .
In recent years De Luca has directed his artistic research on the female figure, focusing his attention mainly on the face.
This investigation into physiognomy has led him to the representation of tight close-ups on dense female faces of expressiveness. Faces dominated by thought and expectation, immersed in atmospheres of melancholy enchantment, which stand out against the background of a continuous nocturne with photographic evidence.
Faces which materialize through meticulous compositional accuracy, based on that ;uncertain border that divides reality and appearance, on the corporeity of the senses and the impenetrable mystery in which they seem to get lost.
What ...

• Nationality: ITALY
• Date of birth : 1953
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary Italian Artists