Italian Street Artist Agostino Iacurci Paints a New Mural in Rome

Agostino Iacurci working on his giant new mural on the side of a building on the corner of Via Aquilonia and Via Teano in Rome. Photograph by Andreas Romagnoli

Italian artist Agostino Iacurci worked on a colossal new mural in Rome as part of Wunderkammern Gallery’s Public and Confidential project, write Andreas Romagnoli and Jeanne-Marie Cilento. He is photographed while painting from a cherry-picker to reach the upper echelons of his giant figures.

DARK stormy skies hover above us when we meet Iacurci working on his new mural in the eastern part of Rome in Prenestino. While the artist still looks like a teenager under his hard-hat, he first started graffiti painting in 1998 when he was twelve years old. 

Born in Foggia in southern Italy in1986, Iacurci has already worked across a diverse range of artistic mediums from murals to illustrating books and painting for gallery exhibitions. His wall murals are even found adding an element of colourful whimsy to Rome’s maximum security prison. 

Iacurci paints figures enlarged to an enormous scale to create his outdoor murals. His storybook characters adapt to the contours of a building’s surface whether it's an apartment building or prison yard. One of the most important influences on the young artist was the work of Italian painter Bruno Munari who also worked with a style that emphasised geometric shapes and bold colour. Iacurci says that another of his main influences is Otto Dix and that he aims to a create a certain serenity and a sense of the future with is massive figures.

Iacurci's work in Rome can be seen in the international context of his projects that now stretch from Moscow to Paris. And his paintings, drawings and etchings have been presented at exhibitions and festivals in Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States. Since 2008, the artist has made huge murals in public spaces for Roma Tre University, Fubon Art Foundation in Taipei, the Fine Art Academy of Rome, the University Campus of Besançon in France, the Saba School in Algeria and ~ together with the inmates ~ two massive works on the walls of the maximum security zone of Rebibbia prison.

Today, Iacurci's art and mural paintings are sought-after all over the world. His new piece in Rome of two bowler-hatted men is a monumental addition to the Eternal City and adds irony and colour to the urban landscape. The artist will have a solo exhibition at Wunderkammern Gallery in Rome in early 2014. The show is part of the Public and Confidential series that began earlier this year. It examines how urban art and street artists interact with the public and the city. 

Visit Wunderkammern Gallery for further information on current and upcoming shows and events in Rome: wunderkammern.net

The completed mural at 28 metres tall and 18 metres wide

The artists ascends on a cherry-picker to continue painting his enormous bowler-hattted men. Photograph by Andreas Romagnoli

A view of Iacurci's new work in progress in Rome's Prenestino district. Photograph by Andreas Romagnoli

The young artist comes back down to ground to mix the colours for his new mural. Photograph by Andreas Romagnoli

An amusing mural in Via del Porto Fluviale in Rome ~ the painting cleverly incorporates the building's windows in the design.

Called Siamese,  this mural is in London's Camden and was a collaboration with Urban Outfitters earlier this year.

A mural painted for Le Mur in Paris this year.

An three by two metre art work made for an urban art exhibition in the Circo Massimo in Rome. 

Called Grafts,  this nine by two metre piece was made for the Venice Bienale in Campo Sant´Agnese.  Detail below. 

Murals made with the students of the Saba School in Algeria

Created for Arte Urbana in Lugano at Via Lavizzari, 5

Created during the LGZ festival and curated by Street Kit in Moscow, Russia

Murals made for Rebibbia prison's On the Wall project. Created in collaboration with a group of 15 inmates on the courtyard's walls, in the maximum security section.

Detail of the Rome prison's mural created by Agostino Iacurci

Mural in Via Lugaro in Turin, Italy

Illustration for the novel "La Finta Nonna" in "Fiabe Italiane" by Italo Calvino. Created for Fiabe dello stivale, International group show

Murals painted for the Univerisity Campus of Besançon in France

The Treehotel in Sweden Adds a New Tree House to its Forest

A Modernist mirrored cube that glints and reflects the sky and leaves designed by Tham & Videgård Architects

Tree houses capture the imagination and tap into the inchoate, distant memory of our hunter-gatherer past. Today, green architecture is the design zeitgeist of our age and living amid the treetops has never been more exciting, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento

Close to the Arctic Circle and with a vista of the aurora borealis, a cluster of tree houses has become one of the most sought after retreats in Northern Sweden. Called the Treehotel, it is located near the lovely village of Harads in Swedish Lapland. Founders Britta and Karl Lindvall commissioned innovative Scandinavian architects to come up with a unique design for each house. In the middle of the forest, Lindvall has created a laboratory for contemporary architecture.

The sixth tree room of the planned twenty-four retreats is called the Five Leaf Clover and is designed by Finnish studio Rintala Eggertsson Architects. Sitting up high on century-old pine trees, it has wide-ranging views and is the largest at fifty-three square metres. Clad in weathered steel, the interior will be lined with plywood.

“At Treehotel we always strive to push limits with our environmental work, architecture and engineering," said Kent Lindvall. "Nothing like the Five Leaf Clover has ever been done before.” The building is attached to six pine trees and hovers six metres above the ground. Visitors climb a two-storey-high staircase to reach the tree house with its three bedrooms and large conference room.

The other tree houses finished in 2010 range from the twiggy Bird’s Nest that nestles in the treetops to a Modernist mirrored cube that glints and reflects the sky and leaves. In between are a surreal UFO tree house that looks like it’s just landed for a pitstop and a fairytale red cottage that has stepped from the pages of Little Red Riding Hood.

The reflective cube was designed by Tham & Videgård Architects with a pale, clean-lined interior and aerodynamic furniture. The Bird’s Nest, designed by Bertil Harström, is encased in branches and entered via a retractable stair case. Inside, it is also crisply Scandavian. There are no faux twig Man Friday tables and chairs, just a sleek, Swedish interior designed for the global traveller.

The Mirror Cube can accommodate two people and includes a living room, large bed, a small kitchenette, a bathroom and a roof terrace. One of the cleverest ideas is the use of infrared film laminated onto the glass panes and visible only to birds. It prevents them from flying into the tree house’s reflective walls.

The UFO tree house was also designed by Harström and looks like a flying saucer from the cult film Plan 9 From Outer Space. Inside, the curving interior has retro 1970s’ style cushions and sofas lit by round windows. The red cabin among the tree trunks is called the Blue Cone and was designed by Sandell Sandberg and constructed from birch shingle using traditional techniques.

The most utilitarian treehouse is Cyrén & Cyrén's cabin, suspended from a bridge. The cabin has a roof-top terrace to survey the trees and a comparatively spacious interior with specially designed built-in furniture and lamps. The Treehotel is 60 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle but is accessible to visitors as an hour's drive away is Luleå, the town with the largest airport in Northern Sweden. 

For more information visit the Treehotel website: http://www.treehotel.se

Architect Bertil Harström designed both the Bird's Nest tree house pictured above and the UFO below. 

The Blue Cone is actually a red tree house made from traditional birch shingles and designed by Sandell Sandberg.

Another view of the UFO tree house in the snow with it's round windows lit up in the twilight that bring light to the retro 1970's sofa and cushions in the picture below.

Cyrén & Cyrén architects designed the Cabin which is suspended high up among the trees and has a rooftop terrace

The Mirror Cube's walls reflect the trees around it so it becomes part of the forest. 

The interior of the Mirror Cube with it's sleek Scandinavian design and furniture ~ no rustic Man Friday aesthetic here.

The reflective glass walls of the Mirror Cube that are laminated with an infrared film that only birds can see to prevent them flying into the tree house.

The tree house that seems to float like a giant nest in the forest when it's ladder is pulled up. 

Artist's rendering of the Five Leaf Clover, the biggest tree house finished this year. The weathered steel building is designed by Finnish studio Rintala Eggertsson Architects and has three bedrooms and a living room.  

Secret Rome: Atmospheric Quartiere Coppedè

Photojournalist Christian Evren Gimotea Lozañes captures the looming Gothic apparition of the Quartiere Coppedè. Jeanne-Marie Cilento reports from Rome

Even on a sunny day with the Eternal City’s sapphire blue skies gleaming above, the quarter’s darker and more obscure corners have an ominous air. Dripping with stony ornament, towered buildings flank a long, low archway lit by an enormous wrought-iron chandelier that leads to the main square, Piazza Mincio. 

The extraordinary mix of Art Nouveau, Ancient Roman, Egyptian, Medieval and Renaissance motifs is the product of one prolific mind, the Florentine architect Gino Coppedè. In 1916, he was given an architect’s ideal project ~ the opportunity to design an entirely new residential quarter of Rome in Parioli. Given creative carte blanche by the clients, the architect allowed his imagination to run amok and designed an enclave more baroque in sensibility than even Bernini could dream up for 16th Century Rome.

Gino Coppedè was born in Florence in 1866 and began his career as a boy sculpting decorative pieces for furniture. Later he attended the Professional School of Industrial and Decorative Arts, graduating when he was twenty-four and becoming a member of the city's Academy of Fine Arts. The architect continued to work in Rome creating extraordinary buildings in the Quartiere Coppedè until 1927.

The original designs were not created for an eccentric millionaire but for a Ligurian building association to house the city’s growing professional class and civil servants. The stone carved winged serpents, monolithic eastern heads and putti that decorate the buildings all come from Gino Coppedè's youth when he worked in the wood carving studio of his father. 

Walking around the Quartiere Coppedè feels like being in a bizarre fairytale with it’s combination of Florentine towers and Venetian palaces decorated with mosaics and frescoes, Baroque Roman palazzi with real and imitation papal stemmata, sundials and even a building with ironwork and carvings in the form of musical notation. 

Today, forty-five different buildings from three to six stories high make up the Quartiere Coppedè. The mosaic-tiled archways, intricate brickwork, turrets, towers and loggias all create a unique architectural borgo amid one of Rome's most sober and wealthy residential suburbs. 

The Quartiere Coppede's central Piazza Mincio with it's massive Art Nouveau  fountain.

Completed in 1924, the Fontana delle Rane's dynamic figures and water creatures dominate Piazza Mincio. 

Full of movement and fantasy, the fountain's sculptures depict giant shells and water nymphs. 

Spouting head of the Fontana della Rane at the heart of the Coppede Quarter in Parioli

Facade showing architect Gino Coppede's extraordinary mix of architectural and historical motifs from the Roman Corinthian columns and Renaissance loggia to the Art Nouveau curling cast iron balcony and tiles.

Detail of the building's entrance with it's graphic black and yellow tiles, iron and glass lamp and panelled wooden doors.

The fantastical Villino delle Fate with it's mix of terracotta, cast iron and mosaic-tiled decoration. 

Detail of the facade of the Villino delle Fate designed by Florentine architect Gino Coppede and depicting Renaissance Florence including Brunelleschi's Duomo and the Palazzo delle Signoria.

The apartment buildings are decorated with Romanesque loggias, Liberty style ceramic tiles and Roman lion's heads and classical heads.

Looking up to the facade of the entrance building flanking the archway, it is covered in a riot of High Mannerist classical figures and heads carved in Travertine marble.

The street leading into the enclave of the Quartiere Coppede.

The enormous wrought-iron chandelier hanging below the archway at the entrance to the Quartiere Coppede.

Palazzo del Ragno built from Travertine marble, Roman bricks and wood and showing Coppede's combination of historical influences.

Garden terraces and apartments form part of the quarter's entrance archway and look out across Piazza Mincio

Palazzo Del Ragno designed and built between 1916-1924 and showing architect Gino Coppede's capacity to combine different materials such as brick, marble, stone and wood and historical motifs.

The great Travertine marble head above the doors leading into the Palazzo del Ragno

Travertine marble decorations carved to represent a winged griffin and stylised lion's head.

Detail of an elaborate corner balcony, the Grotesques carved in Travertine marble.  

10 Questions Column: American Artist Dan Witz

Artist Dan Witz in front of his 'Fighting Dogs' diptych on the eve of the opening of his new exhibition in Rome. Photograph by Andreas Romagnoli

American artist Dan Witz’s exhibition has just opened as part of the Public and Confidential project at Wunderkammern Gallery in Rome. Renowned as a pioneer of Street Art, the artist answers Jeanne-Marie Cilento’s ten questions and sits for a photo shoot with Andreas Romagnoli during the installation of his new show in the Italian capital

UNSETTLING images of doors and grates offering a view of  people suffering behind bars are evocative works that form part of Dan Witz's latest exhibition. These pieces are an extension of the Wailing Walls and Dark Doings projects begun in 2012.  His powerful and effective Prisoner and Free Pussy (riot) series reflects Witz's meditations on freedom of thought and the expression of the individual, created in collaboration with Amnesty International.

Witz's new series called Natural History continues to explore the metaphor of doors that suggest the intersection of public and private spheres in repressive societies. The Wunderkammern show also presents his celebrated Animal Mosh Pits paintings that depict  instinctual savagery plus his portraits of girls with cell phones where personal feelings move from the private into the public realm.

Based in New York, Dan Witz began his career in 1979 and was at the forefront of the emerging Street Art movement. His objective was to challenge traditional canons of art, choosing to focus on urban art, creating installations on the streets of cities around the world. At the beginning of his career, the artist concentrated on hyper realistic paintings which developed into street installations using digital images which he painted over. 

Witz has had extensive formal training including studying fine art and design and has won many scholarships and prizes. Along with recognition from American institiutions such as the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts,  the artist has had exhibitions in galleries worldwide. 

1. What are you currently working on?

Before I move on to the easel for the winter, I hope to do a few more NYC installations from the street series, Natural History, that I premiered in Rome.

2. What inspires you for your creative work now?

Usually something simple from my daily life. The natural history pieces come from all the time I spend at zoos and aquariums with my two year old son.

3. How did you choose  painting, street art and installations as your creative metier?

Street art was my post adolescent rebellion against what I feared would be a limited future as a gallery artist. At some point in art school, it dawned on me that being a self supporting artist pretty much meant making objects to sell to rich people. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have anything against art collectors, or artists who work expressly in that system; I just thought I would like more variety and adventure out of my art life.

4. Can you describe the experience, person or training that has had the greatest impact on your artistic career?

Without a doubt, the grafiteed subway trains in New York City in the late 1970’s. And the Clash. There’s some kind of dissonant alchemy between those two experiences that cracked my suburban mind wide open. I’ve been working off this ever since.

5. What do you find the most challenging aspect of your work?

Definitely these trips to European cities to do street art. It’s always an incredibly demanding and physical process. Usually I get off the plane and hit the street headlong, completely jet lagged, lost, overwhelmed, fulminating within some sort of surreal urban fever dream, and with absolutely no idea how or where I’m going to get my work up. To succeed I need to let myself into the moment and push past my limitations ~ like an athlete. I love it.

6. Where do you like to draw or create your initial ideas for your artwork?

I keep my sketchbook on the couch in my studio where I rest between painting sessions. And for some reason whenever I get on an airplane to go on a street art trip, my mind loosens and gets weirdly free and some surprises can happen in my sketchbook.

7. Do you have a set schedule of working creatively everyday or is the process more fluid?

Depends on where I am. If I’m home, yes, I’m in the studio every week day from 9am-4pm. Even though my studio’s upstairs in my house, I kiss my wife and kid goodbye like I’m some sort of commuter dad. If I’m traveling my schedule is more improvised.

8. What part of painting and/or creating street art and installations gives you the most happiness? Do you find your creative process is more rational or instinctive?

I like the description of successful creative people as having a “mind on fire, and a heart of ice.” I naturally have the mind on fire ~ the inspiration-part going ~ but I’ve had to develop and nurture the rational, scientific mind of ice thing. This has been a life long struggle and unfortunately (or fortunately) the more I master my production process, the more complicated it seems to keep getting.  I’m not sure if I should admit this but I honestly don’t think I could do the large complicated pieces I’m doing these days if it wasn’t for my brilliant studio assistant, Mika Kitamori. I mean this as a compliment when I say she has a, “mind of ice”.

9. Is there a town or place in the world you find inspiring?

I’m really loving Rome now. So many sustained contradictions—one of the few places besides NYC I could see myself living and working.

10. In this digital age what do street art and installations give us as contemporary art?

Just because I’ve been at it for a long time, this doesn’t necessarily make me a reliable spokesperson for Street Art. But with that, I can say that I like this art form because it’s not for sale, no one can own it, so it can exist independently of the compromises of consumer capitalism. It’s free. And in my opinion, an art form that’s not dependent on the market place for its bona fides is a real game changer in today’s art world. If I wanted to sound fancy I’d call it a “paradigm shift”. But, that said, when people find out I've been doing street art for 35 years , almost universally the reaction is something like, “Wow, that’s cool—but how do you make money?”

Dan Witz: Public and Confidential runs from 28th September until November 17th 2013 at Wunderkammern Gallery at Via Gabrio Serbelloni 124 Rome, Italy. Open from Wednesday to Saturday 5-8pm: http://www.wunderkammern.net/danwitz/danwitz.htm

Click on photographs for full-screen slideshow

Dan Witz takes a break from installing his new exhibition at the Wunderkammern Gallery in Rome

 Dogs Fighting (diptych) 2004. Oil and digital media on canvas, 122x122cm (x2)

Pussy Riot. London Grate. From the Free Pussy riot series 2013. Fine art Inkjet print on paper. Edition of 36, signed and numbered. 56x43cm

Pigeon Tower (diptych) 2002. Oil and digital media on canvas, 4 pieces, 111.5x111.5x0.3cm (x4)

Detail of Sleeping King Baby-Bedlam 2012. Oil and digital media on PVC. Edition of three. 158.3x58x1.1cm

Sleeping King Baby-Bedlam 2012. Oil and digital media on PVC. Edition of three. 158.3x58x1.1cm

Mika Bust Grate 2012. Oil and digital media on PVC, wood frame. Edition of six. 43x49.5x2.3cm 

Monica N.O grate 2013. Oil and digital media on PVC, wood frame. 34.5x48x3cm

Ruth Gagged Horizontal Bars 2013. Oil and digital media on PVC, wood frame. Edition of three. 186.5x70.5x1.5cm 

Sarah F Yellow Window 2011. Oil and digital media on PVC, wood frame. Edition of three. 91x97.5x1cm

Melissa 2007. Oil and digital media on canvas. 43.5x64x4.5cm

Laura 2008. Oil and digital media on canvas. 41.5x56.5x4cm 

Necropolis Door: Two Prisoners 2013. Oil and digital media on PVC., wood frame. 123.5x228.5x2.5cm

Running Dogs 2007. Oil and digital media on canvas, 106.5x81.5xx6.5cm

Add Necropolis Door: Natasha 2013. Oil and digital media on PVC, wood frame. 115.5x221x3cm