The Adventure of Domenico Gnoli
18 March - 23 May 2026
Lévy Gorvy Dayan
19 East 64 Street
Scroll to the bottom of this webpage to preview works on view.
More than five decades ago, in 1969, Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970) was the subject of a sprawling survey exhibition at Sidney Janis in New York. The next year, at age 36, he would be dead, having left behind a small but robust collection of paintings over the course of his too-short life.
This Spring, Lévy Gorvy Dayan will assemble the artist's largest U.S. survey since the 1960s exhibition (and largest posthumous U.S. exhibition), organized in collaboration with Gnoli's widow Yannick Vu and sister Mimì Gnoli — both of whom are lending rare works and never-seen archival material to the show. The exhibition is supported by historical material that contextualizes the Rome-born artist's time in the New York art scene leading up to his death. The LGD exhibition, entitled The Adventure of Domenico Gnoli, follows a pandemic-timed retrospective at Fondazione Prada in Milan.
Gnoli's work appears remarkably current: either far ahead of its time; a direct influence on specific contemporary artists; or a mix of both. Despite his contemporaries' slant toward abstraction, Gnoli delighted in staying true to what he was doing, and was pleased when it began to be better understood in the context of Pop Art. Said the artist in 1965: “I have always worked [as a painter] as I do now, but it did not attract attention as it was Abstraction’s moment. Only now, thanks to Pop Art, has my painting become comprehensible. [...] I always employ simple, given elements, I don’t want either to add or take anything away. I have never even wanted to deform; I isolate and represent. My themes come from the world around me, familiar situations, everyday life; because I never actively mediate against the object, I experience the magic of its presence.”
In his short yet historic life, Gnoli established himself as a master of perception, elevating humble and everyday sights and objects to the atmospheric and metaphysical. Of his artistic ethos, he reflected, “For me imagination and invention cannot generate something more important, more beautiful and more terrifying than the common object, amplified by the attention we give it.” His singular skill in rendering meditative detail, quiet surprise, and human presence in his paintings is undeniable—and testifies to the limitless power of his, and our, focused attention.
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More information is in the above-linked press release, and a preview of works on view is below. See the Dropbox folder linked above to download web-resolution image files. Artwork information is in each image’s file title. Image reuse must be exclusively in association with press coverage of the exhibition, with the credit lines as indicated in the file titles.
