Piero Guccione Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Piero Guccione was a painter, engraver and illustrator. The art critic Vittorio Sgarbi defined him as the greatest Italian painter of the last fifty years. Read the full biography

Piero Guccione Biography

Piero Guccione was a painter, engraver and illustrator. The art critic Vittorio Sgarbi defined him as the greatest Italian painter of the last fifty years. Guccione created several pictorial cycles, the most famous of which is the one dedicated to the sea. The artist provided a totally conceptual interpretation of the sea views, finding in the line that unites the sky and the sea an image capable of instilling tranquility in the observer.

Piero Guccione was born in Scicli, Sicily in 1935. He left his classical studies to dedicate himself to painting and drawing, first attending the art school of Comiso and then the art institute of Catania, where he graduated in 1954. He moved to Rome after his father's death and attended the Academy of Fine Arts. However, he found the experience uninspiring and decided to enroll in a parastatal off-site advertising school.

Guccione had the opportunity to come into contact with various Roman artistic personalities and took part in a series of paleoethnological missions on the Libyan side of the Sahara desert to detect prehistoric paintings and graffiti. Meanwhile, he staged his first solo exhibition in Rome in 1960 and participated in the Venice Biennale in 1966.

Between the 1970s and 1980s, Guccione continued to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. In 1979, he returned permanently to Sicily where he built a house-studio which became a point of reference for other artists. Guccione obtained several awards abroad and in 1988 a personal room was dedicated to him in the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Guccione received several awards and honors. In 1995, he was named Academician of San Luca, in 1999 he received the Special Award for Culture from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and in 2004 the Gold Medal from the Presidency of the Italian Republic. In 2011, a documentary film entitled Piero Guccione, towards the infinite was dedicated to him.

Piero Guccione died in his home-studio on 6 October 2018, at the age of eighty-three.