Leoncillo’s sculptural body of work unfolds across four decades

The body exists in Leoncillo Leonardi’s work not as representation but as pure energy, a trembling presence that moves through form like breath through sculpture. From the delicate tracery of his earliest olive tree studies to the monumental, faceted volumes that would define his mature language, the human figure remains the constant interrogation, the singular obsession that anchors his artistic inquiry.

Thaddaeus Ropac’s inaugural exhibition dedicated to this pioneering Italian sculptor opens with a generosity of perspective, gathering works across four decades to reveal the through line of a practice devoted to the body’s manifold possibilities. These pieces, both sculptural and drawn, chart a course from his chromatic beginnings through the Post Cubist vocabulary of the 1950s, where geometry and gesture began their tender collision. By the final decade of his life, Leoncillo had entered the realm of Informale, that radiant abstraction where form dissolves into pure feeling, where the body becomes sensation itself.

A trilogy unfolds

This presentation marks the opening chapter of a sustained trilogy, a considered unfolding of Leoncillo’s vision. The curation by Alberto Salvadori, Azalea Seratoni and Lorenzo Fiorucci orchestrates an intimate conversation between works, allowing each piece to illuminate its neighbours. Paper studies sit alongside monumental stone and ceramic forms, revealing the artist’s restless exploration of scale, surface and the infinite vocabularies available to the hand that shapes.

The exhibition respects the complexity of Leoncillo’s development without imposing neat historical narratives. Instead, it allows the work to speak of its own preoccupations: the way sculpture can hold emotion, how abstraction might paradoxically intensify our sense of the embodied, the possibilities that emerge when Post Cubist rigour softens into the gestural freedom of Informale expression.

For those drawn to sculpture’s deeper mysteries, to art that grapples with form as both idea and material truth, this exhibition offers a rare encounter with an artist whose voice remains distinctly his own, unconcerned with fashion, entirely devoted to the exploration of what sculpture might communicate about the human condition. The works shimmer with intellectual rigour and emotional directness in equal measure.

Until 14 November 2026, the exhibition remains on view at the gallery’s Milan location. The full presentation is also available online, extending this remarkable journey beyond the gallery walls.

Imagery courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac (@thaddaeusropac).