Mauro Perucchetti

Italian, b. 1949

Born in 1949 in Milan, Perucchetti was an only child. Initially taking a job in Milan, he then moved to Rome and enrolled for classes in theatre studies. Starting to act in film, he worked with Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol in The Driver's Seat (1974).  More film roles followed and he set up a production company, hoping to initiate something better than the current spate of kung-fu movies. Changing course once again, he relocated to London and threw himself into architectural and design work.

In 2000, Perucchetti sold his design and architectural practice and his home so he could become a full-time artist. Finding contentment in dedicating himself to art - something he felt he had to do - he spent the next three years experimenting with materials before perfecting the formulation of the resin he wanted to use and patenting it. It was lustrous and transparent, forever changing under different lighting conditions. 'Perucchetti's use of polyurethane resins is pioneering', writes art critic Elspeth Moncrieff. 'Resin has an innate instability and is even more difficult to control when foreign materials are embedded within it. Like prehistoric insects captured in the sticky ooze of the amber resin that killed them while preserving them, Perucchetti entraps his objects for all time. His work is totally beguiling. It is high-tech, of our time, bright, clean, and utterly original.'

With bold, synthetic colours and pristine surfaces, Perucchetti's art appeals to the eyes and to the sense of touch. The 'jelly babies' he has made from 2002 onwards show him playing games with childhood associations. In Cloning Factory neat rows of the tiny figures, coloured like blackcurrant and lime, strawberry and orange, are laid out on shelves, with random babies standing up and teetering on the edge. The message is unsettling, the imagery cute.

Perucchetti's bejewelled sculptures challenge consumerism and greed. In Precious One, a life-size female form is encrusted with Swarovski crystals while her head is impaled with syringes. An entire toilet and toilet-roll holder blaze with precious stones in Because You're Worth It; diamond-studded toilet paper is, as art critic Edward Lucie-Smith suggests, 'as pithy a metaphor as one can imagine for useless, senseless and perhaps injurious luxury'.

With witty elegance Perucchetti moulds heart-shaped perfume bottles which on closer inspection turn out to be hand grenades; similarly, giant lipsticks turn out to be warheads. Perucchetti takes society to task for its ridiculous preoccupation with brand names, he attacks distortion of religion, jokes about recycling and addresses addiction. He engages with social concerns without moralising and without the anger of many of his contemporaries, revitalising recurrent themes with new treatments, as in the 'Iconic Slab' series of 2012. Asked in early 2009 why he makes art, he explained: 'I wish I could be a politician to govern fairly, a religious leader to guide pragmatically and a powerful entrepreneur to serve as an example and inspiration to others, but I can't. However what I can do hopefully is create art that makes people think about global issues.'

With pieces in public collections in the United States and Britain and in many private collections, Perucchetti has achieved considerable worldwide acclaim since his late arrival on the art scene. His work has been the subject of solo and group shows across Europe and America, including Blast! held in London and Paris in 2006-2007 and Apopalyptic (2009), Mauro Perucchetti (2010), Warhol/Mauro (2012) and UNICUM (2013) at Halcyon Gallery. Future exhibitions are planned for various international locations, among them Saint-Tropez, Sardinia and California.

Perucchetti has taken part in numerous art fairs and in 2011 was invited to present three monumental works at Rome's first-ever festival of outdoor sculpture, the Rassegna Internazionale di Scultura di Roma. Another significant public art placement was Father and Child, commissioned for the headquarters of Rieber & Son in Bergen, Norway (2009). Perucchetti's unmistakable, multicoloured Jelly Baby Family, with its chubby but elegant translucency, appeared at London's Marble Arch as part of Westminster Council's City of Sculpture Festival (2010-2011), at the Courchevel Winter Pop Sculpture Festival (2011-2012), at the Chelsea Flower Show and as a permanent installation in Singapore (both 2012); during Paris's Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) in October 2012 it was exhibited against the historic backdrop of the Louvre. On Sky Arts television, it was selected for the 'Objects of Desire' series (2012) as one of the world's most coveted items.

Entitled UNICUM, meaning 'a unique example or specimen of something', Peruchetti's latest exhibition at Halcyon Gallery from April-May 2013, presents Abstracts, a series of new abstracted resin panels alongside recent additions to his Hip Pop works. The culmination of thirty years making, evolving and manipulating the inherently difficult medium the artist pioneered, these sculptural works have exceeded the expectation of past production. Perucchetti has pushed the boundaries of his material to create densely rippled and undulating forms pulsating with energy and colour that are, unusually, hung on a wall or displayed as stand-alone pieces. 'I love Abstract art as it is art in its purest form' states Peruchetti. 'It is art completely devoid of any restrictions.' 

In the new Hip Pop series Perucchetti further develops the images that have become synonymous with his work - the 'jelly baby', 'skull', 'heart grenades' and 'totems' - which are displayed with new icons reflecting such topical issues as the global economy, environmental neglect and political unrest.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2013 UNICUM, Halcyon Gallery, London
2012 Warhol/Mauro, Halcyon Gallery, London
2012 Barclays Private Banking, Casino Square, Monte Carlo, Monaco
2010 Mauro Perucchetti, Halcyon Gallery, London
2009 Apopalyptic, Halcyon Gallery, London
2008 Louise Alexander Gallery, Porto Cervo, Sardinia, Italy
2008 Absolute Art Gallery, Knokke, Belgium
2007 Bertin-Toublanc Gallery, Paris
2007 Semmingsen Gallery, Oslo
2006 Blast!, Beaux Arts, London
2005 Bertin-Toublanc Gallery, Paris
2005 Atkinson Gallery, Street, Somerset, UK
2004 Beaux Arts, London

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2012 Bel-Air Fine Art Gallery, Porto Cervo, Sardinia, Italy
2012 Absolute Art Gallery, Knokke, Belgium
2011 Galerie des Lices, Saint-Tropez, France
2011 Absolute Art Gallery, Knokke, Belgium
2011 Bel-Air Fine Art Gallery, Geneva
2008 Bertin-Toublanc Gallery, Miami, USA
2007 Rudolf Budja Gallery, Vienna
2005 Perucchetti and Oliver: Young Contemporaries, Beaux Arts, London
2005 Summer Show, Royal Academy, London
2003 Summer Show, Royal Academy, London
2002 Blue Gallery, London

ART FAIRS
2012 Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC), Louvre, Paris
2011 Art-Élysées, Paris
2011 Art Monaco
2011 Rassegna Internazionale di Scultura di Roma, Rome
2011 Art Paris, Grand Palais, Paris
2008 London Art Fair
2006 London Art Fair
2005 20/21 British Art Fair, London
2005 London Art Fair
2004 20/21 British Art Fair, London
2004 London Art Fair
2003 Art Palm Beach, Florida, USA2005  London Art Fair
2004  20/21 British Art Fair, London
2004  London Art Fair
2003  Art Palm Beach, Florida, USA

SELECTED PUBLIC PLACEMENTS
2012 Jelly Baby Family, Plaza Singapura, Singapore
2011 Jelly Baby Family, Modern Heroes, Purple Heart, Courchevel, France
2010 Jelly Baby Family, Marble Arch, London
2009 Father and Child, Rieber & Son, Bergen, Norway

COLLECTIONS
Gateway Foundation, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
Wellcome Trust, London

AWARDS
2006  Sense & Sensuality, BlindArt, Bankside Gallery, London; Richard Attenborough Centre, Leicester, UK; joint first prize