Antonio Nocera - The Turn of the Third Millennium

Born in Caivano, Naples, in 1949. He attended the Art Institute, and courses in painting, scenography, and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. He has lived in Milan since 1970; he came into contact with the artistic circles of Brera and the painters of the Naviglio (with whom, in his early career, he took part in a performance on Viale Toscanini in Parma) and exhibited there for the first time (1972). A subsequent exhibition at the Scuderie della Pilotta in Parma (1975), and others in France, Switzerland, and England, destinations of Nocera's many travels, increased his fame, marking the beginning of a notable exhibition activity and the completion of important commissions. In 1977 he moved to Parma with his family. Since 1988 he has had a studio in Rome and, since 1994, another in Paris, in the heart of Saint-Germaine-des-Prés. The committee for the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution (1989) invited him to exhibit at the European Parliament in Strasbourg and then in the Italian capital, under the patronage of the French Embassy. In 1997, he produced etchings for the volume Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and graphic works in aid of Professor Montagnier's World Foundation for AIDS Research. In 1998-1999, he created the official sculpture for the 11th World Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association held in Bologna, presented a bas-relief to John Paul II, and illustrated an edition of the Gospels for the Jubilee Year. The Modula Arte gallery in Parma (which had presented the artist's Histoire de Pinocchio in 1993) and the Liehrmann gallery in Liège hosted the series Terres de lune, terres de fable. In 2001, he exhibited at the Fürstenberg Gallery in Paris, and presented the series Pinocchio and the Moon at the University of Parma. In 2002, under the patronage of the Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi, he exhibited in Florence, in the Nascent House of Palazzo Viviani and in the Galleria Tornabuoni, Once Upon a Time and There Will Always Be – Pinocchio and the Moon, a significant group of works linked to the theme, also developed in the illustrations of the volume Pinocchio, story of a puppet in the edition (with the full text by Lorenzini, under the aegis of the Collodi Foundation) and the subject of travelling exhibitions from Rome to Genoa, Collodi, Todi, Perugia, Paris, Brussels, Liège, Monte Carlo, New York, Tokyo (2002-2003).