About

Antonio D’Acchille is considered the leader of the “Nuova Maniera” (New Manner) artistic movement. His pictorial works characterized a long phase of activity in the field of figurative arts, a phase dialectically linked to a wider movement of thought involving great European personalities in an extensive cultural, literally and philosophical debate. This artist’s professional activity contributed to characterize a new season in the aesthetic field, animating with its example a firm resistance to the post-avant-garde currents in the name of everlasting artistic canons: rigour and mastery of the difficult rules of good painting, in conjuction with an original immersion in the languages of literature, history and myth.

As emphasize by some of the leading contemporary art historians (Paolo Portoghesi, Maurizio Calvesi, Claudio Strinati, Giulio Carlo Argan, Cipriano Efisio Oppo, Giuseppe Gatt and others) and by absolute authorities in the field of aesthetics (Rosario Assunto), Antonio D’Acchille’s New Manner constitutes a sort of narration through images. His rigorous pictorial art and, above all, his evocative powers were able to re-create the meaning, the taste and the evocative potential of the classical myths, and of the great tradition of sacred art. In D’Acchille’s world, the author’s refusal of the passive obedience to the tyranny of history, and his rejection of the current trends, are evident. His “anachronism” is not a suffered condition but, on the contrary, a specific and definitely radical choice, a choice which turned the author into one of the most significant leading figures of an artistic season, a figure that doesn’t yeld to current trends but determines them and, in doing this, keeps a surprising and enchanting freshness of language.

In his works ranging over the time of history and over the evocative space of a nature rekindled with new meanings, the artist reveals a thorough grasp of the technical means belonging to the best academic tradition, means projected in the contemporaneity through a fresh, efficacious and constantly modern language.

Living in Rome since 1950, but with roots in the Abruzzi, he received his academic degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1959. Followed by years of study in stylistic with important and challenging works that performs on order: paintings, bronze sculptures, large scale mosaics intended for public buildings and liturgical. From 1980 to 1985 directs the Academy of Fine Arts in L’Aquila, while from 1986 to 2001 has held the first chair of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. This master has always been a champion of the pictorial language richness against avery attempt to deny and marginalize wide-ranging works, a champion of boldness and an opponent of the artistic language simplification brought to the point of self-destruction. In his defence of art, D’Acchille also resorts to the most demanding expressive means of the great classical tradition: extensive canvas and frescos reaching monumental proportions.

Hundred of exhibitions in Europe and United States (among these, the one at Palazzo dei Diamanti di Ferrara and a personal retrospective at the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. In the last decade his works has focused mainly on commissions for public artwork and private. Designs the apse and realizes the great dome – covered with venetian gold mosaic – in the General House Institute Daughters of S. Giuseppe in Rome. Among the latest exhibitions, participation in the award Michetti, the XIII Quadriennial National Art of Rome, Epica Forma in Toronto (Canada) and the LIV Venice Biennale. He paints the great telere for the Church of the Visitation in Jerusalem. In the square of Castel di Sangro realizes the commemorative bronze monument of Teofilo Patini, and runs a large scale bronze sculpture for the city Court of Caltagirone) and a long academic experience allowed the handing down of his work and the formation of generations of new artists in conformity with the most demanding and rigorous canons of the tradition.

It’s not without reason that some of the most important Publishing Houses included Antonio D’Acchille among the most important protagonists of the contemporary mythological painting, next to the great figures of a glorious past.

In the 2003 Antonio D’Acchille was honoured by the President of the Italian Republic with the title of Gold Medal of the Meritorius for The Art, Culture and Education, for his commitment to the diffusion and elevation of the Arts.