Marco Lodola's Biography

Marco Lodola (Dorno, April 4, 1955) is an Italian artist. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and Milan. The subject of Lodola’s thesis, and subsequently a point of reference for his artistic work, are the Fauves and Matisse. At the beginning of the 1980s and together with other artists who gather around the Luciano Inga Pin Gallery in Milan, Marco Lodola gives life to the artistic movement that takes the name of New Futurism, of which Renato Barilli is the main theorist. This new artistic current, of which other Italian artists such as Dario Brevi are part, is inspired by and re-proposes the Historical Avant-garde based on the key concept of the exaltation of modernity, reworking it into new canons and with an irrepressible and omnipresent thrust towards new forms of ‘art.

Lodola combines visual art with other disciplines: literature, music, cinema, design. He soon approaches the use of plastic materials that he shapes and colours with a personal technique through the use of acrylic colours. Later his research led him to try to physically insert light in his works: the luminous sculptures were born, statues in Plexiglas illuminated internally with luminous tubes, which will characterize all the artistic production.

Later, Lodola returns to oil painting, reproducing his own sculptures on canvas, often in natural size: the most used theme is that of dance and dancers, the Vespa and pin-ups, in retro style. The works made with the technique of enamels on canvas are also very popular, while the works with enamels on mirror and felt-tip pen on paper are rarer.

Since 1983 Lodola has exhibited in Italy and abroad, including in Milan, Rome, Bologna, Florence, Lyon, Barcelona, ​​Vienna, Madrid, Paris and Amsterdam.

He exhibited a light installation in the Italian Pavilion of the 53rd Venice Biennale, and participated in the 54th Venice Biennale with the project “Cà Lodola” curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, and at the Milan Triennale in 2009.

His works are present in various museums, and he has created sets for films, broadcasts, concerts and events. In particular, he was active in fashion and theatre, he created a poster for the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and for the facade of the Ariston for the 2008 Sanremo festival.

He has created works for commercial, charitable and purely artistic purposes. Lodola has always had a great passion for music, so much so that on several occasions he has stated that his great dream would have been to become a musician, but this passion remains present in his works. He has collaborated in the musical field with 883 and Max Pezzali (creating the cover of the album Gli Anni), the Timoria and Omar Pedrini, Ron and Gianluca Grignani. In 2009 he set up the Rock’n’Music Planet in Milan, in collaboration with the municipality, in Piazza del Duomo, with twenty-five sculptures representing as many personalities as possible of contemporary music. He also took care of the scenography of the seventh edition of X Factor, and for the film Ti Presento un Amico by Carlo Vanzina and created a sculpture for the Hilton Hotel group. And with various companies, including: Watch, Ducati, Coca Cola, Titan, Grafoplast, Harley Davidson, Riva, the Illy coffee brand that chose him among the designers chosen to give life to the “Author’s Cups” series. Again Seat, Dash, Fabbri, Carlsberg, Nonino, and in fashion Valentino, Coveri and Vivienne Westwood who wanted his works as a backdrop for her fashion shows at Milan Fashion Week 2011. Colourful and evocative are the façade arrangements in which Lodola is he successfully experiments, for example, with the interventions on Ca’ d’Oro in Venice during the 2011 Biennale. In July 2016 he sets up the scenography for Andrea Bocelli’s The Theater of Silence, in the hills of Lajatico. In the theatrical field he collaborates with Puccini’s Opera Tosca and with the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, creating works in perpex and neon with lively colours. In the first months of 2018, Marco Lodola also carried out several LED installations along Corso Matteotti di Pontedera; these works culminate with other works at the PALP in Pontedera. Between 2017 and 2019 he is particularly active in the city of Alessandria, where he creates works to celebrate Giuseppe Borsalino, Napoleone Bonaparte and the battle of Marengo and Umberto Eco.

27 June 2020 until 29 November 2020, brings a monumental luminous scenography to the Mart (Rovereto TN): dancers, mythological animals, and other sparkling figures up to three meters high surround the fountain in the square that gives access to the museum. The setting takes up the circularity of the spaces, generating a carousel of lights inspired by the visionary nature of circus art.

Marco Lodola’s work looks with complicity at the flat and bright backgrounds of Fortunato Depero, as well as at the visual immediacy of advertising languages. Free from conceptualisms, Lodola’s luminous silhouettes are aimed at the public of television, pop music, cinema, confronting the imaginary of mass communication. In the heart of Mart’s architecture, his figures appear as iconic nocturnal apparitions.

Discover the works