Renowned for developing an artistic language where painting, sculpture, everyday objects, and symbols intertwine in a curious visual dialogue, Lucio Del Pezzo—Neapolitan by birth and training—together with Biasi, Di Bello, and others, was one of the founders of Gruppo 58 and the magazine Documento Sud.

The exhibition pays tribute to one of the central themes of Del Pezzo’s artistic research: the Casellario. Introduced in his painting-sculptures as early as the beginning of the 1960s, this element became one of the distinctive features of his language, finding its first autonomous and accomplished expression in 1968 with the work Visual Box.

His Neapolitan origins represent a fundamental key to understanding his artistic vision. Naples, a melting pot of cultures and traditions, a cultured, mysterious, and magical city, became a fertile ground from which to draw inspiration for the development of his own poetic language. During this early phase of experimentation, Del Pezzo’s works, imbued with a neo-Dada flavor, were populated by symbols, found objects, relics, and debris, all trapped beneath a thick patina of oil paint.

It was later his archaeological studies in Greece, his Parisian experience—where he was deeply influenced by the dreamlike component of surrealism—and his move to Milan in the early 1960s that steered his research toward a greater emphasis on form and object-based elements.

While the symbolic element remained central, it was now organized within rigorous structures. The various forms, initially arranged freely on shelves, were later enclosed in grids, compartments, and organized spaces. It was in this context that the Casellario was born—a compositional device within which, like a skilled archaeologist, the artist placed and arranged his findings. To the iconographic core of his early explorations, Del Pezzo increasingly integrated forms borrowed from de Chirico’s painting, liberty-style decorative elements, geometric structures, and architectural volumes. These components were joined by formal suggestions from Egyptian and Byzantine art, reinterpreted by Del Pezzo not as simple quotations but as active elements of an autonomous alphabet.

This can be seen in Visual Box and in the four small casellari on display: spheres, cylinders, and curvilinear elements are placed alongside pyramids, hourglasses, twisted columns, and decorative volumes belonging to the metaphysical and surrealist realm.

These works evoke the imagery of medieval bestiaries or herbals, where heterogeneous elements were collected and preserved as testimonies of the marvelous and the unknown. Yet, unlike those repertories, in Del Pezzo’s works there is no scientific or systematic classification; objects are playfully arranged, following the rules of chance.

For the artist, the Casellario is an archive of memories, where each compartment holds fragments of time, recollections, and suggestions. The Casellario is a visual alphabet, a language that constantly renews itself, allowing for personal and multiple interpretations.

Lucio Del Pezzo (Naples, 1933 – Milan, 2020) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples. In 1960 he moved to Milan, where he held his first solo exhibition. The following year, he exhibited in the United States, where he was awarded the Carnegie International Award. In 1964 he exhibited at the Triennale di Milano and the Venice Biennale, where he returned in 1966. The neo-Dada figuration of his beginnings evolved into a rational geometry with a metaphysical flavor and references to pop language. In 1965 he took part in the inaugural exhibition of Studio Marconi, with which he established an intense collaborative relationship.Major public collections: Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna – Civico Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan – Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Parma – Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome – Städtisches Museum, Bochum – Museum Ludwig, Cologne – Musée d’Art Moderne, Grenoble – Victoria and Albert Museum, London – Musée Cantini, Marseille – Fonds Nationaux, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris – Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam – Museum of Modern Art, New York – Carnegie Foundation, Pittsburgh – Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagaoka.

Dep Art Out is a place beyond the ordinary, where art manifests itself in innovative ways. The trullo, an icon of Puglia recognized worldwide, becomes an extraordinary exhibition space, immersed in the countryside between Ceglie Messapica and Martina Franca.