Nicola De Maria

Born in Foglianise (BN) in 1954. He lives and works in Turin. Together with Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi and Mimmo Paladino, the artist from the Campania region Nicola De Maria is one of the exponents of the Transavanguardia, an Italian artistic movement based on a project by Achille Bonito Oliva in the second half of the 1970s with the intention of overcoming the abstract-conceptual language of the Neo-avant-garde movements through a return to tradition and figuration, drawing on expressionist approaches with a focus on painting, colour and technique, reappraising such elements in a contemporary key. After his studies in medicine in Turin, pursued up to a specialisation in neurology, Nicola De Maria decided to dedicate himself to art. From a brief experience in 1975 linked to photography, the artist moved on to an assiduous production of pencil drawings on paper, later also using pastels, watercolours and oils. He then began to paint directly onto walls, creating his first oil canvases, in which the choice of a vivid and intense colour that defines the entire work surface (be it the wall of a room or a very small support) becomes the basis on which to undertake a very personal research path, to the point that he defines himself as “one who writes poetry with his hands covered in paint”: an expression of clear research towards an abstract lyrical sphere.