Alessandro Busci

Alessandro Busci, painter and architect, lives and works in Milan. A graduate of the Milan Polytechnic University with a thesis in art history (supervisor Flavio Caroli), he explores the potential of exchange between the western and eastern iconographic traditions in work characterized by a highly distinctive pictorial and calligraphic style on unconventional supports like steel, copper and aluminium, worked with acid and enamels, or on the more traditional paper.

Busci first presented work in 1996 at the 36th edition of the Suzzara Prize and has since held solo shows in Milan, Rome, Brescia, Turin, London, Bordeaux, Madrid, Milan, Bilbao, San Francisco and Naples. He has worked since 1997 with the Atelier Mendini on various projects of architecture, decoration and exhibition design, including wall art for the chain of Swatch stores and the ‘Telefono Azzurro’ touring exhibition. In 1999 Busci was awarded first prize in the Venetian ‘La Fenice et des Artistes competition’ and held a solo show entitled ‘Dirty Water. Brown Light. Light’ at the Galleria Antonia Jannone in Milan, followed by ‘Steel Life’ in 2002.

2008 saw the solo show ‘8’ at the Mark Wolfe Gallery in San Francisco (CA, USA) and ‘Cor-Ten’, a major series of fifty large works on iron examining the spaces of the contemporary city, exhibited first in Turin to coincide with the T2 Triennial of Contemporary Art and then at the First Gallery in Rome (2009).

In 2010, within the framework of the China Trade Award, Busci and Cathay Pacific presented the volume Airports at the Milan Triennial. His work was also shown in the Italian and Cuban pavilions at the Venice Biennial the same year. The solo show ‘Milan-Naples’ was held in Naples at the Galleria al Blu di Prussia in 2011 and the joint show ‘Omar Galliani | Alessandro Busci – a change of generation (centre of permanent gravity)’, curated by Flavio Caroli, in Gallarate at the Museo MAGA in 2012.

In 2014 the great solo exhibition at the Milan Triennale, “In alto Milano”, 90 works dedicated to the growth of new vertical city, curated by Ada Masoero.

In 2017 SEA invited Alessandro Busci for his solo exhibition MILANO FLY ZONE which occupied the space called “Soglia magica” – La porta di Milano – Milano Malpensa Airport, Terminal 1 from April 2017 till the end of March 2018, an exhibition visited by more than 2 million transit passengers.

In June 2017 with Barbara Paci Gallery in Pietrasanta he exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London invited by Heesen Yatch for a special project for the Superyacht Gallery exhibition event.

Collaborations on site-specific projects such as the AP HOUSE in Urbino with GGA giardini gibertini architetti continued in 2017.

In 2018 his work San Siro Rosso entered the San Patrignano collection, whose presentation exhibition toured La Triennale in Milan, Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and the Maxxi Museum in Rome, before being permanently placed in Rimini at the end of 2019 on the occasion of the opening of the new museum of contemporary art PART in Palazzo del Podestà.

Also in 2018, he had a solo exhibition ‘RUST’ at Imago Art Gallery in Lugano and ‘Iron & Ivory’ at Galleria Al Blu di Prussia in Naples.

Between summer and autumn 2018, he worked on the #Quarantallaquarta project for San Patrignano: to celebrate the community’s 40th anniversary, working in the workshops in close contact with the young people, he produced 40 works on 40×40 cm steel that the Robilant+Voena gallery then hosted in an exhibition of the same title.

In June 2019, the double solo exhibition Alessandro Busci & Michele De Lucchi for the Antonia Jannone Gallery in the new premises in Pietrasanta: the centrality of nature is the theme that unites the inspiration and execution of the works on display, between painting and sculpture, in a unique and extraordinary dialectical relationship.

In 2021 the personal exhibition BluCervino. L’Adieu des Glaciers, curated by Luciano Bolzoni, recounts the Matterhorn, its iconic power: not only a peak to be conquered and admired, but a universal symbol of the idea of mountains (Museo delle Alpi. Fortress of Bard, Aosta Valley).