Occidental Deposit

Enzo Cucchi is one of the main representatives of the Italian Transvanguardia movement, along with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino. This group began working at a time when the obligation to opt for the new had disappeared—when the productive rhythm of economies had begun to slow and the world was gripped by a series of crises that laid bare the productive frenzy of all ideological systems, including the so-called crisis of art.

Cucchi considers that the function of art consists of the very possibility of tearing down that barrier, of opening it up to the vital decomposition of other images that, like Chinese boxes, are dynamic, unpredictable, and unimaginable. The artist, given his nature, must begin in a landscape of ruins; only there can he also begin to create a constructive project. In Cucchi's opinion, art needs a previous catastrophe to wipe out pre-existing structures and reduce them, in the cordiality of deleterious findings, in order to subsequently manipulate the elements of a work that can then move freely between painting and sculpture. The creative force cannot invent anything from nothing, but it can humanly assemble elements that were previously at odds with each other.