GIUSEPPE LANZILLO

b. 1913, Naples, Italy
d. 2005, Bologna, Italy

WORKS | BIOGRAPHY | EXHIBITIONS | PUBLICATIONS

SELECTED WORKS

BIOGRAPHY

GLport Giuseppe Lanzillo had paranormal experiences as a child and survived a fall from the second floor of his parents' house at the age of four. Many synchronistic experiences and strange coincidences marked his life. In his sleep he often had out-of-body experiences in which he traveled to imaginary countries and visited fantastic cities made of crystal.

Lanzillo was 57 years old when he suddenly woke up at night with an irresistible urge to paint. Previously he had had the feeling of being visited by extraterrestrials, and now he began to create his works under the influence of external forces. His children had given him an easel and oil paints because he had developed the habit of doodling absentmindedly. Lanzillo always painted with a large brush that his wife had originally bought to paint radiators. When no canvas was available, he painted on the backs of armchairs and on the dressers. One of his first paintings was "The Veiled Lady," the mysterious apparition of a female figure that appeared to him almost every night for a year.

His subjects were mainly portraits executed in rapid gestural strokes and deserted, disquieting landscapes. The monochromatic figures seem like fleeting apparitions. His landscapes of inanimate places in cold colors under icy clouds like Nordic expanses. Sometimes rock formations seem to merge with towers and archaic architectural structures like the remains of sunken civilizations or mysterious places on alien planets.

Lanzillo was convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial beings and that his images were somehow created through their mediation. Lanzillo's obsessive automatic creativity lasted only eleven months, from March 1970 to February 1971. After that, he only occasionally drew with thick felt-tip pens on paper, drawings that were also given to him by the aliens.

EXHBITIONS

2010 Giuseppe Lanzillo – Poetica dell’Inconscio, Ca' la Ghironda ModernArtMuseum, Bologna, Italy

1976 Galleria Guglielmo Tell, Chiasso, Switzerland

1971 Galleria D'Arte Al Crocicchio, Bologna, Italy

Galleria D'Arte La Pialla, Bologna, Italy
Teatro Lirico, Milano, Italy
Circolo della Stampa,Bologna, Italy
Galleria del Colonna, Bologna, Italy

PUBLICATIONS

Bonvincini, Nerio, "Giuseppe Lanzillo, un eccezionale caso di pittore medianico a Bologna." In: L’arte inconsapevole. Dissociazione creativa, ispirazione, medianità. Studi sull’arte medianica. Rome: GSE Edizioni, 2018, 59-68.
Cassoli, Piero, "Studio di un caso di cosiddetta 'pittura medianica': Giuseppe Lanzillo." Quaderni di Parapsicologia del CSP di Bologna. 4/5, 1972, 62-76.
Cassoli, Piero, "Studie eines Falls der sogenannten medialen Malerei: Giuseppe Lanzillo." Grenzgebiete der Wissenschaft, 24, 1975, 1-22.
Donati, Maria Teresa, "Peppino Lanzillo: pittore o fenomeno cosmico?" Metapsichica, 1973, 29-30.