Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Zurab Gallery (Russia) | Stefania Brugnaletti

For the first time in Russia, Moscow Museum of Modern Art opens a personal exhibition of Francesca Leone, the artist whose paintings have a special place in contemporary Italian art. “Beyond Their Gaze” project presents about 30 large-scale paintings notable for the carefulness of the technique, the concentrated consciousness of chromatic transitions, and the extreme refinement of experiences combined with the force of a visual spell. The exhibition marks the screening of the Sergio Leone movie restored by director Martin Scorsese for the Moscow International Film Festival.

Francesca Leone was born in Rome into a creative and versatile family: her father Sergio Leone was the outstanding film director who collaborated with Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, and Ennio Morricone. Francesca’s mother was a famous ballerina, her grandmother was an actress. Since her birth, Francesca was endowed with a deep, spontaneous emotionality that was reflected in her pictorial works.

At the start of her creative career, Francesca Leone studied and reinterpreted the artistic experience of Futurism: Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, and Giacomo Balla. Her fascination with Futurism was reflected in the works of the artist – her oeuvre includes energetic compositions where movements of the figures are shown in a dynamic stream of time, where flashing forms, zigzags and oblique lines prevail, where motion is depicted by imposing of consecutive phases in one image (the so-called principle of simultaneity). This artistic principle of “closed dynamics” is reflected in her huge portraits, as if they were piling on the spectator, not holding within the canvas borders.

Despite the obvious narrative and coloristic dramatic nature of her works, Francesca Leone tells the story that is made of thoughts, not of events. The artist has chosen the theme of the picturesque matter formed and transformed in front of the eyes of the spectator. As if the image couldn’t or shouldn’t be provided with a static quality that would have fixed it once and forever. The deep sense of Francesca’s works is concealed in the metamorphoses of the matter symbolizing the conditions of human existence in a labyrinth of a city and an intimacy of a home.

The characters of Francesca Leone’s pictorial works are distinguished by the highest concentration of tension that generates ideas and actions. The theme of the city and loneliness is present in her portraits, heroes, thoughts and actions. Francesca Leone introduces a sensual, emotional measurement in hyperrealism and creates magnificent pictures that can be defined as classical works of the big style – but it is the modern classics, the classics of our time.