Amanti antichi

“The image enters and takes the face of all the accentuated feelings that always agitate
us [...]. The task is now to find a form equal to this image, a form, a colour, a
material.” (CARANDENTE, 1969, p. 14) Leoncillo’s presentation of new works at
the Galleria La Tartaruga in 1957 marked his abandonment of the post-Cubist sculpture
for which he was known and definitive adoption of an Art Informel approach.
Thus began a period of intense experimentation with matter during which Leoncillo
often addressed subjects of the past rethought in an aniconic sense, as in Ancient
Lovers, an intimate reinterpretation of the Sarcophagus of Spouses (Rome, Villa
Giulia, Museo Nazionale Etrusco). The artist moulds, cuts and excavates the
stoneware in a visceral archaeology of the image that reveals the original essence of
the material and his passion for the same. The ancient lovers are the Etruscan couple
eternally united in millennial terracotta. Ancient and yet always new lovers are
Leoncillo and the material with which he works. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)