Thologiny (Zeus and ice cream)

Daniele Fortuna - Artist biography

Daniele Fortuna, artist born in Milan in 1981, since his early teenage, thanks to his passion for art, visited artist studios and art galleries among the most important of the city.

After finishing his studies Daniele Fortuna returned to Italy and began to create his first works. His art began to take shape and he created his first works in wood, paintings formed by wooden pieces shaped, coloured and then assembled like parts of a puzzle. Later he will move on to three-dimensional compositions, at first subjects from the animal world and then icons of the classical Greek-Roman combined with colours and traits of contemporary Pop.

Daniele Fortuna's sculptures are made of wood painted with acrylic paint, thus combining the plastic, material feature of wood with colour, a key element of the artist's aesthetic. Hence the word "colormination", a neologism that refers to the chromatic contamination of classical busts that occurs in his art. The word comes from "domination", a strong term, but combined with colour that renews its meaning.

A bridge between classical and contemporary Pop

Fortuna's sculptures have as their starting point classical subjects, Greco-Roman busts that are recreated in wood, with a technique that juxtaposes several staggered levels, almost recalling a digital reproduction.

Combining bright and pop colours with classical shapes, he creates a bridge between past and present, bringing classic subjects back to their original form. Originally, in fact, the very statues of classicism were coloured but, for centuries, were mistakenly believed to be white due to the deterioration of the original pigments. In a way, Daniele Fortuna implements a return to the past through contemporaneity.

"If you look at the whole history of art, there has always been a remaking of something that already existed before; and so, instead of looking for absolute originality, in my opinion we need to focus on what we have (also because anyway the cultural background we have is fantastic and it is to be paid homage to) and make it more contemporary by updating it."