CITYSCAPES OF NEW YORK
A review by John Ancher of Marco Luccio’s new work to be shown in an exhibition of dry points and drawings at the Steps Gallery, 62 Lygon Street, Carlton South, from 1st April until 27th April 2008.

Artist’s talk: Sunday 13th April 2.00pm. Bookings essential through website www.marcoluccio.com

Last year, Melbourne printmaker Marco Luccio spent ten weeks in New York living in a tiny fourth floor apartment on the corner of East 29th Street and Lexington Avenue, ten minutes walk from Grand Central Station.

Marco and artist wife Debra were captivated by New York; by the city’s energy and monumental scale, by the honesty and savvy of brash New Yorkers, by the textures of built fabric, the total cacophony and the light effects down in those urban canyons, and by the impact the city’s mythology made on their artistic impulses.

While Debra drew New York’s ballet dancers, Marco set out to record and interpret the entity of the city, its vitality and moods, its architecture and humanity, its pulse and the constant acts of renewal he observed, New York rebuilding, all evidence of the self-belief most of us associate with the world’s most famous metropolis.

Luccio arrived in New York ready to work. He organised the transport of 42 copper plates from Melbourne, 20 in his own luggage, restrained by strong cardboard packaging to prevent damage to suitcases in transit, and 22 distributed amongst the personal luggage of ‘couriers’.

The dry points Luccio exhibits are the end product of a process that is both creatively exhaustive and physically demanding. Because he believes in the grand European landscape tradition of working on site in the open air, a gargantuan subject such as New York (which he was visiting for the first time), presented a daunting challenge. Familiarisation was the first necessity, days devoted to walking and observation. Luccio’s working method is to sit and sketch his selected view roughly before making a considered drawing. He then spends two to three hours drawing directly onto the copper plate, in the public gaze (and New Yorkers in their rings of curiosity are never mute) in all weathers, even snow. In New York, offers are made for the sketch book, the drawing, the unfinished plate which Marco Luccio, graphic busker, politely declines.

Back in the studio he considers the plate, completing his initial mark-making. The first proof is taken. The process of consideration, reworking and proofing can be long and difficult. In the early days, Luccio sometimes pulled over twenty proofs for one finished print. For his New York prints, the number of proofs needed will be no more than six, all taken back in Melbourne. Each plate gives an edition of 25.

Marco Luccio, urban artist, tells a city’s story through the edgy medium of dry point. His prints accentuate joi de vivre through the exuberance of the mark-making. In New York, he explores the geology of that city’s unique architecture. Fissures in facades and exfoliation of the built fabric are celebrated. The metropolis as quarry. In the frantic web of Luccio lines, the nerve endings and tendons of hard materials are always exposed. Arteries of habitation pulse and dreams of another brave new world are challenged.

Luccio infuses the iconic with the imaginary. In his prints, New York is touched by Atlantis, Piranese, Cecil B de Mille and the archaeology of film sets. The sense of place he captures is remarkable for its individuality. New York has rediscovered its mythology in these images.

Luccio’s portrait of the iconic architectural landmark, Chrysler Building, barely toys with perspective. The act of looking up imposed on the viewer is symbolic only. We are paying homage to the God of Commerce rather than responding to the accuracy of a pictorial convention. Faced with an organic rendering of architecture where detail is selectively depicted, we wonder if this is New York’s Tower of Babel before the onset of God’s jealous fury. Perhaps the unembellished shafts of scratchy black indicate that the totem of commerce is a work in progress.

Truck, Crane and Empire State on E 29th shows a city at street level, rebuilding. We contemplate the urban equivalent of a gap in the rainforest canopy where a giant tree has fallen. The Empire State Building looms but the more imposing presence of cranes as skeletons of growth indicates that a new structure is already on the rise. We know that the Empire State Building will not be visible from here for long. In the foreground of this telephoto parable on progress, a dumpster truck stalks in dark shade like a camouflaged rhino. New York magically conjuring the exotic from trash.

Fifth Avenue from Above. Here New York’s frantic heartbeat is exposed through exuberant mark-making. Traffic, people, streets and buildings fuse into a pattern approaching chaos. But as we peer down into the urban crevasse of 5th Avenue, the print’s strong structure ensures that our impressions of texture and movement remain essentially distinct. No iconic monuments are required in this image to open an unforgettable window on New York.

Manhattan Skyline from New Jersey, with Boats. In this expansive view, the Manhattan skyline is depicted as a dense wall. Crammed together, the verticality of the city giants is accentuated. Cranes protrude above many buildings, ostensibly as symbols of progress, but are they erecting or devouring? Both Empire State and Chrysler buildings are there as mere palings in a fence. The foreground is a frenetic river scene. Boats power across the choppy Hudson, their dynamic progression seeming to ridicule the rootedness of built New York. If these boats could speak, we imagine they’d be saying, ‘Look at us! We’re free while Manhattan sinks under its own importance.’

New York from the Rockefeller Centre. New York is viewed from above here with no dramatic display of verticality. The city’s density is heightened by a dark mat of geometric texture, almost featureless and infinitely absorbent of human aspirations. On close inspection, scale is provided by the suggestion of vehicular traffic, indistinct scars disfiguring the bases of two urban canyons running away from the viewer, converging fissures in a vast pumice rock shelf. We gaze out from the summit of a skyscraper, up amongst the blimps and helicopters.

New York Rooftop and Lexington Avenue. Peripheral New York is depicted here as a bright rooftop prospect. Cars progress calmly along sunlit Lexington contained by relatively modest built form. The print’s almost literal focus is on the disarray of rooftop furniture stretching out just below the viewer’s eye level. Distant cranes imply progress but as things stand we’re being shown a backwater in the metropolis and our contemplation of it suggests the mighty city’s vulnerability.

Grand Central, Main Hall. In this interior view, the architecture provides a modelled backdrop to a remarkable impression of bustling humanity crossing the vast concourse on a hundred separate axes. Figures are rapidly drawn vignettes, incomplete for the most part, captured in the act of movement. Sunlight penetrates the space through huge overhead apertures accentuating the human drama of catching trains. This vivacious image conjures reminiscences for me of Raoul Dufy’s pen and ink drawings of crowds at concerts and casinos.

The Cityscapes of New York exhibition will include many of Luccio’s exploratory drawings amongst the thirty plus dry points. This brief article will not attempt to review the drawings but it is a welcome indication of growing confidence in his art practice when a specialist print-maker wants images from his working documentation to be scrutinised as stand-alone works.

Marco Luccio’s take on New York individualises the familiar. Those of us eagerly following the artist’s development will have expected him to respond brilliantly to the ultimate metropolis. Cityscapes of New York will stimulate his supporters and win him many new admirers. The dry points in this show, gestural and inventive images of a city we all instantly recognise but are seeing here afresh, represent the medium at its most persuasive.

John Ancher is the Curator of the Hutchins Art Prize. He is a practising artist and an architect who lectured for many years at the University of Tasmania’s School of Architecture. 23/1/2008 (amended after receiving corrections of fact from Marco, 29th January 2008)

Andersch, Joerg
Inside Arts, The Mercury 13 October, 2007

Superb Graphic Rendering

Pentimento: Florence and Paris
Colville Street Art Gallery

Drypoint etchings and drawings by Marco Luccio and sculptures by Ian Munday are featured in this exhibition.

Luccio’s journey to Europe could possibly save you money, since some of its icons are prominently featured. The Eiffel Tower and several spectacular views of Paris will fill your cravings for the centre of the artistic universe, while the legendary Uffizi by the Arno will have any Florence-lover in a spin.

Luccio’s superb graphic rendering substantiates his growing reputation as a premier Australian printmaker, and like his first show at this gallery last year, this one is a step closer to perfection. Yet while most of the larger works catch the attention, it is a humble print in the anteroom that absolutely shines. Less spectacular but brilliantly worked, this print not only demonstrates good techniques, it is pictorially superbly structured.

Ian Munday’s sculptural constructions are a fine foil to the prints on show, and between humour and inventiveness it is its very simplicity that makes his work shine. Almost all works are of table-top proportions, and also show that beauty rests not only in the eloquence of the work but in its purity of concept.

Some Background on Pentimento from Marco Luccio

To create the work for Pentimento I traveled to Paris and Florence for the inspiration of those two beautiful cities.

We arrived in Paris in December 2005 and began the work for the show which I later finished at the Baldessin Press in St Andrews .

To work in Paris was a dream I had held for a long time, and then one day, I woke up, I was in Paris , and it was time for me to work. It was cold of course, but I rugged up in layers, left the apartment and took a train to the Arc de Triomphe so I could draw its views into my sketchbook.

I choose the Arc because I knew that its location included everything that would fire the automatic response that inspires my work. I find it hard to work from memory or from photos, so I really have to work live-on-site, and the site has to be a place where something monumental is happening. The monumental thing that Paris does is lay down layers and layers of itself as every moment passes, each moment never to be repeated, and it has places where you can see that happen.

On top of the Arc de Triomphe I saw all of Paris laid out around me, in the grid of the traffic, the pressing crowds, the gulls, the frigid wind, and the sights; the wedges of city split by those radial boulevards, the classic lawns, the arresting architecture and the Eiffel's perfect industrial icon.

Possibly the one sight I did not anticipate turned out to be one of the best. Soon after I arrived I saw, floating above those classic Paris rooftops and capped by the constant zigzag of passenger jets high above, a fleet of intensely coloured hot air ballons. They just meandered about the city, looking for all the world like exclamation marks streaked onto the cityscape. I could barely take my eyes off them, and couldn't believe my luck to see this reminder of those classic French hero-scientists among this brilliant, heaving city that stakes its place in the here and now yet all the while flaunts its past. I had to include them in my images of that day.

I made some of the images in Pentimento in Florence , Italy , in late 2005. Through the generosity of some patrons, Debra and I stayed in the centre of the old town in a beautiful apartment near the Duomo of Florence, the Santa Maria del Fiore. That for me was amazing, because without quite realizing it or even fully understanding why, the architectural dome has become a recurring motif in my work, and the Duomo's dome is perfection, to me. Perhaps it's the form itself, or because I'm taken with the vaulting ambition of the designers, I really don't know, but when I see great domes I'm always compelled to just sit and draw them from life. The Duomo was no different, and from the apartment I could open a window and look over the rooftops to contemplate this beautiful object.

At that time the Duomo was actually surrounded by scaffolding, which probably marred the experience for the thousands of tourists who trail past it daily, but for me the sight was serendipitous. It just reinforced to me that this place, which lives and thrives on its Renaissance past, still lives on. Scaffolding is all about remaking the city, and it signaled a truth outside the romantic conception of the place. In a way, the scaffolding was all of one with the profusion of air conditioning units, antennae and satellite dishes on the red roofs of the old town. Together, it reminded me of a thought that I've carried for a while now – that time speaks to us through our marks on the city, and that they are never entirely rubbed out. Everything changes, even in glorious artifacts like Florence , but when the change follows the layering of new lives on top of the old, it's beautiful.

A new focus for me in my current work is the horse, and Pentimento includes images of a horse's head that I first drew from an Etruscan sculpture in the Louvre Museum , Paris .

Miller, Prue Bella Bellissima Australian Art Review
Issue 12 November 2006 – February 2007, p 25

From the hamlet of St Andrews east of Melbourne to central Florence in Italy , Debra Luccio and husband Marco (see ARR Issue 9)can be found literally traversing the earth working towards the perfect print.

Who on earth would not be drawn to Florence to work? Centuries of magnificence glaring from every visual plane, and the chance to tread where art immortals have paved the way. Debra and Marco will be taking those same steps on their next trip to Florence in 2007 where they have been invited to work at the Edi Graficar Studio, creating work upon a stone used to finish lithographs for artists such as Henry Moore, Tamayo and Carra. Marco Luccio will find this especially intriguing, as he is himself a most highly regarded printmaker in his own right. To have access to one of the finest print studios in Italy is a chance a craftsman such as Marco would once only have dreamt about. A few blocks from the river Arno , on Via San Niccolo the Edi Graficar studio can be found, surrounded by the twisted streets of a bygone era. Graficar may have a profound effect on the Luccios' work. The impact will be twofold – it will combine the physical characteristics of the circa 1800 press, and the imput from one of the most esteemed master printmakers, Felippo Becattini.

For Debra, it is another step in the process she finds fasinating and wondrous. An artist of the human form Debra works towards seeing bodies pushed to extreames, into shapes and poses that reveal newness to the form – the model and Debra working as a team to find what satisfies the criteria. “I am truly grateful to them [the models] as they twist themselves into all sorts of positions for me to work with. My models understand that I want my work to be universal, not about one thing or another.” Indeed, Debra cannot even think of herself as one thing or another – questioned as to whether she considers herself a sketch artist or a painter or a printmaker she just laughs.

“I don't know. People always try and categorize other people don't they? But I don't mind because it makes me look at myself and that's a good thing.” Her honesty about herself is not at all surprising when you consider she is an element of the work she strives to create that abounds in truth. “Drawing the nude from life is a great experience. The sense of connection I feel with the model whilst drawing is wonderful. It feels instinctive – uncensored and without design. I always feel it is such a privilege.”

To many, including myself, her lifestyle is a privilege afforded to so few. She and Marco travel the world, etching, drawing, absorbing beauty and energy and translating that into a tangible experience on generous Velin Arches paper for all to see. A curious artistic relationship – Marco famous for his depictions of the industrial, build environments and Debra for her nudes, it is nonetheless a jigsaw of ideals that fits together perfectly to form a strong bond – intrinsically involving the drawn line. It is this transference of lines and energy that makes their forthcoming journey so important: to see if something more can be added by this master printmaker and his ancient press. Debra is looking forward to her work with Felippo transforming her drawings and photographs of the surrounding sculpture of Florence into rich prints of tone and line. She will be using the traditional lithographic process by drawing directly onto the large smooth stone with oil-based crayons. Filippo will then etch and print the image from the stone. And then to the printing.

This is the most exciting part of their business – both Debra and Marco find this the point, when their prints are revealed to them, almost heart stopping. It is the moment of when their expectations can be met, dashed or surpassed. It is the same experience whether at Baldessin Press Studio in St Andrews or in Florence . The moment of truth. Before the Edi Graficar experience Debra will be exhibiting her nex show Light & Shade in Hobart and Marco will be exhibiting his show Pentimento – Images of Paris and Florence , at the Steps Gallery in Lygon Street until the end of November, before it moves to Canberra and Hobart .

Working with a beautiful model can be a distraction for an artist. Not so for Marco Luccio, whose drypoints and etchings of two of the most beautiful cities in the world go far beyond mere architectural description.

Not for Luccio afternoons wistfully wasted sipping hot chocolate in the Café de Flore, watching the world pass by, imagining that you are sitting in the very chair that Picasso or Hemingway sat in.

Instead, the Melbourne artist is up the top of the Arc de Triomphe drawing the Eiffel Tower one way and the view to Montmartre the other.

Then he's up the stairs at Notre Dame to sketch the many gargoyles and, as night falls, the lights of Parks.

In Florence he is similarly athletic, drawing from the hill at the Piazzale Michelangelo or inside the Uffizi looking out, sketching the bridges across the Arno .

Luccio was there for only four weeks last year, but the first impression of the latest exhibition is one of sheer energy. This is compounded by the manual dexterity of his process.

Most of these prints of Florence and Paris are drypoints – that is, no acid is used to create the groove in the copper plate to hold ink.

The grooves are made by hand, leaving a burr that also holds the ink and prints like a blurred feathered shadow around the line. Drypoint requires great strength of hand.

This exhibition continues Luccio's fascination with cities previously seen in his graphic essays of Sydney and Melbourne.

There is a swinging bravura to Luccio's drawing. It doesn't dwell on strict empirical description of the architectural form (as attractive as it is) but scraping into the copper plate lets the line develop its own charcter and direction.

His Eiffel Tower moves off centre, leaning like a Frech Tower of Pisa. Its metal lacework become structurally unsound, yet registers as a freehand equivalent of this icon of the Industrial Revolution.

Decribing Notre Dame's gargoyles, Luccio places them within a tondo, a porthole, through which you peer at these gothic guardians on the famed Galerie des Chimeres.

Detailed sketches of the winged things accompany Luccio's print. For a moment you can see the artist's concentration wafting off into medieval associations of the monster Gargouille, thought to be an original inhabitant of the Seine until killed by St Romaine in the 7 th century and put into service as a water spout.

The masterprints in the exhibition are his Paris Triumphant 1 and 2. they can be seen singly or joined as a diptych.

Though monotonal, printed in a warm mixture of sanguine darkened with a smell of black, they convey the atmosphere and immensity of the subject.

This is reinforced by the platetone, the pentimento of the platewiping process intentionally left to “bed down” the lines into.

This aspect of Luccio's work places it outside the many other graphic impressions of the same subject that too often read simply as descriptive tourist posters.

It's the autonomous nature of his line as a line it its own right, with personality and attitude, amplified by such pentimento, or shadow of the line, that places Luccio's prints of the top end of the genre. Bellissimo!

Miller, Prue Bella Bellissima Australian Art Review

Issue 12 November 2006 – February 2007, p 25

From the hamlet of St Andrews east of Melbourne to central Florence in Italy , Debra Luccio and husband Marco (see ARR Issue 9)can be found literally traversing the earth working towards the perfect print.

Who on earth would not be drawn to Florence to work? Centuries of magnificence glaring from every visual plane, and the chance to tread where art immortals have paved the way. Debra and Marco will be taking those same steps on their next trip to Florence in 2007 where they have been invited to work at the Edi Graficar Studio, creating work upon a stone used to finish lithographs for artists such as Henry Moore, Tamayo and Carra. Marco Luccio will find this especially intriguing, as he is himself a most highly regarded printmaker in his own right. To have access to one of the finest print studios in Italy is a chance a craftsman such as Marco would once only have dreamt about. A few blocks from the river Arno , on Via San Niccolo the Edi Graficar studio can be found, surrounded by the twisted streets of a bygone era. Graficar may have a profound effect on the Luccios' work. The impact will be twofold – it will combine the physical characteristics of the circa 1800 press, and the imput from one of the most esteemed master printmakers, Felippo Becattini.

For Debra, it is another step in the process she finds fasinating and wondrous. An artist of the human form Debra works towards seeing bodies pushed to extreames, into shapes and poses that reveal newness to the form – the model and Debra working as a team to find what satisfies the criteria. “I am truly grateful to them [the models] as they twist themselves into all sorts of positions for me to work with. My models understand that I want my work to be universal, not about one thing or another.” Indeed, Debra cannot even think of herself as one thing or another – questioned as to whether she considers herself a sketch artist or a painter or a printmaker she just laughs.

“I don't know. People always try and categorize other people don't they? But I don't mind because it makes me look at myself and that's a good thing.” Her honesty about herself is not at all surprising when you consider she is an element of the work she strives to create that abounds in truth. “Drawing the nude from life is a great experience. The sense of connection I feel with the model whilst drawing is wonderful. It feels instinctive – uncensored and without design. I always feel it is such a privilege.”

To many, including myself, her lifestyle is a privilege afforded to so few. She and Marco travel the world, etching, drawing, absorbing beauty and energy and translating that into a tangible experience on generous Velin Arches paper for all to see. A curious artistic relationship – Marco famous for his depictions of the industrial, build environments and Debra for her nudes, it is nonetheless a jigsaw of ideals that fits together perfectly to form a strong bond – intrinsically involving the drawn line. It is this transference of lines and energy that makes their forthcoming journey so important: to see if something more can be added by this master printmaker and his ancient press. Debra is looking forward to her work with Felippo transforming her drawings and photographs of the surrounding sculpture of Florence into rich prints of tone and line. She will be using the traditional lithographic process by drawing directly onto the large smooth stone with oil-based crayons. Filippo will then etch and print the image from the stone. And then to the printing.

This is the most exciting part of their business – both Debra and Marco find this the point, when their prints are revealed to them, almost heart stopping. It is the moment of when their expectations can be met, dashed or surpassed. It is the same experience whether at Baldessin Press Studio in St Andrews or in Florence . The moment of truth. Before the Edi Graficar experience Debra will be exhibiting her nex show Light & Shade in Hobart and Marco will be exhibiting his show Pentimento – Images of Paris and Florence , at the Steps Gallery in Lygon Street until the end of November, before it moves to Canberra and Hobart .

Andersch, Joerg Images of the City The Mercury 22 April, 2006 p.10

Images of the City
Colville St Gallery, Colville St , Battery Point
Price range: $2250 to $4500

Printmaker Marco Luccio and sculptor Larissa Smagarinsky have combined to show their work at the Colville Street Gallery.

Usually the term “high-energy prints” carries a connotation of much scribbling with little substance but not in this show. Printmaker Luccio presents a superb series of cityscapes, including the famous “coat-hanger” of Sydney . (Not familiar with the term? It's Sydney Harbour Bridge and the nickname goes back to the time the bridge was built.)

There is a wonderful immediacy about Luccio's work and, from what I hear, he actually starts his work on the plates “en plein air”, which means working on site. It's a brave move and the results are terrific, testifying to great craftsmanship.

Larissa Smagarinsky's powerful and elegant bronze figures are superb. In style somewhere between a realist approach and a fluid sojourn in abstraction, the figures are sensitive with a great deal of warmth, which makes it hard to keep one's hands off them.