
Luca Raimondi is an established Italian painter that has built an international base of collectors. Employing chiaroscuro and impressionist techniques, his works result in moving, immersive figurative and abstract landscapes that transmit ideas of ecstasy, peace, solitude, and connection to nature.
EN PLEIN AIR Luca spent 15 years moving his easel outside, observing real light effects, and being exposed to wind, rain, darkness, midday light, sunsets. Luca Raimondi has studied and trained with Marc Dalessio, and Nathan Sowa, and through years of study and copies of the great masters of the past.
STYLE AND APPROACH Luca master an impressionistic approach to figurative painting, he tries to be quick, leave marks alone, transferring to canvas his response to what he sees. His abstract work is a pure synthesis of color combinations seen in life. He has a collection of hundreds of quick sketches, made from life, that are his own “library” of light effects. Working on big canvases, up to 2 meter wide, he seeks to evoke light effects in a large scale, and the viewer is often captured, immersed into the painting.
EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS
Luca has exhibited in more than twenty solo and group shows.
Now his works are found in private collections in Europe, USA, Cina, Qatar.
He is represented by local and international galleries, Singulart (Paris), Riseart (London), Zatista (USA) galleries, and by the Elle Arte and Caravello galleries in Palermo.
He collaborate with architects on projects where his painting are collected and installed in new home redesign projects.
Luca studied and trained with Marc Dalessio, one of the most successful contemporary landscapers, and Nathan Sowa, and through years of study and copies of the great masters of the past.
He works in Palermo, Sicily, where he lives with his wife and their 3 children.

His works transmit peace, ecstasy, silence, or still solitude and distance. His is an "intimate" pictorial style that, through quick and instinctive brushstrokes, transports us directly into his universe.
Solo Show
- 2022, Suspended light, Galleria Caravello, Palermo
- 2018, Open Studio
- 2014, “Painting en plein air”, Galleria Bobez Arte, Palermo, curated by Floriana Spanò
- 2012 “For lights, for fruits”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo, catalogue essay by Aldo Gerbino
Group show
- 2019, “Dentro e fuori le mura. La pittura non ha confini”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2019, “Art a porter”, Galleria Spazio HUS , Milano
- 2019, “Dipinti di blu. Variazioni sul tono” , Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2019, “”Dulcis in fundo. Il dessert è dipinto” , Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2018, “Art a porter”, Galleria Spazio HUS , Milano
- 2018, “Elogio della luce. riflessi e riflessioni per i vent’anni di Elle Arte”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2017, “L’apparenza incanta”, a cura di Marta Ceribelli, Castello di Fiano Romano
- 2016, “Dalla riva all’orizzonte. Suggestioni marine”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2015, “Variazioni di Luce”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2015, “Destinazione Palermo. La città riflessa”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2015, “Declinazioni della luce. Nel colore, nel segno”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2015, “Incipit”, Galleria Elle Arte , Palermo
- 2014, “Luci di Sicilia”, Grand Hotel Piazza Borsa, Palermo
- 2013, “Recent works” Caltagirone, Kennel, Raimondi, Triolo, Church of San Giovanni Decollato, Palermo
- 2013, “Colors”, Gallery Elle Arte, Palermo
- 2012, Auction, Casa d’aste Babuino, Rome – Wheat Field, oil on canvas, 50x 70 cm , AMREF
- 2012, “Landscape colors” , Galleria Web Art , Treviso
Press and publications
- “Guida alla pittura a olio. Riflessioni, principi e pratica in studio”, Luca Raimondi, Il castello editore, 2020, isbn 8827601279
- City Rivista, “La luce si fa astratta”, dicembre 2020
- Elledizioni (collana Rosa dei venti ), “Per luci, per frutti” con testo di Aldo Gerbino, 2012
- Casa d’Asta Il Babuino, Roma, “Opere di arte contemporanea a sostegno di AMREF, 100 artisti per AMREF”, lotto 558, 2012
- Zoe Magazine, Luca Raimondi interview, 2013
- Nel mio studio!: 70 principi per studiare, comprendere e semplificare la pittura ad olio, Luca Raimondi, Amazon – Createspace, 2013
- 101 cose da fare in Sicilia almeno una volta nella vita, “Regalarsi un tranquillo weekend di pittura a Palermo”, Daniela Gambino, Newton Compton Editori, 2014
- Luca Raimondi, Landscape “en plein air”, Zoe Magazione, 2014
- Luca Raimondi, Landscape “en plein air”, Inchiesta Sicilia, 2014
- Luca Raimondi, Landscape “en plein air”, Amazon – Createspace, 2014
- Named on: Corriere della Sera, Repubblica, Giornale di Sicilia, LiveSicilia.it and various blog
Teaching
- Artist residency, Borgo Santo Pietro, Chiusdino, Toscana, agosto 2013, selected as artista in residence and landscape painting instructor
- Private teaching
- “Guida alla pittura a olio. Riflessioni, principi e pratica in studio”, Luca Raimondi, Il castello editore, 2020, isbn 8827601279

Landscape “en plein air”
by Floriana Spanò, essay from Bobez Gallery solo show, 2014
PAESAGGIO “EN PLEIN AIR”
by Floriana Spanò
The landscape arises from the interaction between the observer's gaze and the surrounding environment. It is precisely this interaction that defines it. Without it there would only be a mute overview
an end in itself, without any sentimental or psychological implication.
The painter shows us with his eyes what surrounds him, through his sensitivity and his live experience, penetrating the profound meaning through his own sensations, his own way of perceiving reality, the sense of his own psychological investigation and sentimental.
The artist becomes a sort of pioneer who investigates nature and then shows it to us as he perceives it. Telling the passing of time and the seasons through the use of color and the study of light, the immediate translation of a momentary emotion.
The artist neglects the superfluous, paints on the canvas a synthesis of the "impression" that an external stimulus has aroused in him.

Drawing leaves space for not calculated brushstrokes , and here comes touches, small dots, spots; contour of lines seldom appears.
The painter doesn’t paint anymore in the studio but outdoors, “en plein air”, abandoning the old academic method , so concentrating on real landscapes, bathed in lights, searching for combinations of pure and complementary colors.
Luca's approach, recalling the impressionist technique, aspires to convey the immediacy of the image, giving his works an extremely recognizable touch, making it fascinating
for the personal way of representing, more than for the object of the representation itself.
It is from one's personal sensitivity, experience, and technique, that different reproduction of the same landscape comes from.
An example of this is the double pictorial version of the famous establishment along the Seine "La Grenouillère" by Monet and Renoir, who in 1869, while placing their easels next to each other, in a few hours each created their own Grenouillère choosing a personal resolution for the expressive rendering of the work; the first through a series of fat and structured brushstrokes, the second liquid and suffused. Luca Raimondi, born in 1977, has observed and studied nature for a long time in order to reproduce it, letting himself be carried away by the sensations that the landscape suggests to him, such as the colors and the scents, but also by the curiosity of being able to "stop" even just for a moment the movement of the waves always different.

His works express peace, bliss, silence, solitude and remoteness. Luca “immerge himself” in nature as a way to focus on it, taking a break, enjoying what surrounds him, find ways and solutions to show it us in a more concise, clear, direct way. For this reason Luca paints "alla prima". Through the direct contact with the nature, he performs quick strokes to get a direct impression of it.
His works express peace, bliss, silence, solitude and remoteness. Luca “immerge himself” in nature as a way
to focus on it, taking a break, enjoying what surrounds him, find ways and solutions to show it us in a more concise, clear, direct way.
For this reason Luca paints "alla prima". Through the direct contact with the nature, he performs quick strokes to get a direct impression of it.
It is the impression, the primary imprinting, what comes straight from sight to our mind and which allows us to recognize an object as such.
Robert Henri said that “Brushstrokes send a message whether you like it or not. A brushstroke is the reflection of the artist in the moment it is made. All the certainties, the insecurities, all the ups and downs of his spirit are in them." The idea assimilated by the artist's mind flows energetically on the hands and the brush, giving free rein to creativity'.
The artist uses the technique that the French, for the first time, called "en plein air" and indicates the habit of painting outdoor,
open-air landscape, i.e. bringing it to the finish directly on site, without subsequent interventions in the studio. Pictorial practice, born a few years before Impressionism, by the Barbizon painters, but subsequently used regularly by Monet and Renoir, first, and Pissarro and Sisley then, even if, in reality, what these painters created in the air open was, in general, an initial draft, a motif on which to work on in the studio to refine and complete the work.
In the outdoor sessions, the Impressionists manage to grasp the most subtle passages of light and tone, perceive the chromatic value of the shadows and refine their technique based on close touches of pure color, so that the image recomposed on the canvas does not lose the intensity and chromatic richness of the direct approach. This choice is dictated by the desire to immediately grasp all the luministic effects of direct vision.
A subsequent continuation of the picture under study could put the memory into play, alter the immediate sensation of a vision.
Luca says about his painting:
"when you paint it out you're in deep contact with nature. Sounds and colors are endless information that couldn't be otherwise accessed. This experience force you to be quick, to take risks: I have not too much time to reflect and I can access my instinct, giving spontaneity to my paintings.
You need to remember what you've seen because every minute everything changes.
It’s another way to paint: out of the comfort of a warm studio you are in front of the fragility of yourself, exposed to the elements: you are in the game.
Then you realize that what is in front of you is so immense and elusive: you have to be simple and concise; be fast and quick. The colors you use can’t replicate exactly what you observe; you can only give the illusion, and you must use them in order to find strategies and means of expression, trying to get closer to nature, to capture its essence. "

Directness is the base of the expressive language of Luca, and his paintings are embedded with feelings and perceptions of what have surrounded him in that place, at that particular time.

“For lights, for fruits”
by Aldo Gerbino, from the catalog of the personal exhibition, Galleria Elle Arte, 2012
For lights, for fruits
Suspended between a delicate and vibrant motion, and a kind of uneasy stillness, the light in these paintings evokes that atmosphere known as “the hour of the spirits.” In these debut works, the light follows a pictorial path dedicated to an intimacy of understanding, to contemplation.
The pebbled beaches, between Furnari and Oliveri, appear now enveloped in the first light of noon; or now seem to disintegrate under the fading glow of the sunset, while the curve of the cliffs is shadowed by an ethereal bluish veil.

Luca Raimondi’s figurative aspirations are channeled into a sort of funnel, where he codifies a necessary spiritual balance which swings between incontrovertible reality and its distillation and is presented in a continuous expressive remodeling seen through the impact with his eye and his soul.
Moreover, he employs a pictorial perspective in which the casually placed objects of his still life compositions, the darkness of the shadows, the sudden shifts of contrast, seem to alternate in a continuous perceptive progression approached with a certain trepidation by this young painter from Palermo (born 1977) as a way maintaining control, allowing a personal investigation subjected to his own observational skills.
If, for Luca, painting is understood as an analytic code concerned primarily with mark-making and confirmed by his acquaintance with teachers such as Sowa and Dalessio and by an awareness of the neorenaissance verismo of americans such as Cecil and Graves in Florence, then it is with the material of paint, through its density and physicality, that he attempts to create “flesh”, to provide visual and sensory stimuli. So the mark, the brushstroke, that quality of drawing which holds everything together, dissolves and turns into a joyful and melancholic substance, a kind of camouflage, which suggests, at times, a tendency towards metaphysical painting.

Luca’s path is part of a post-romantic approach to nature, and is evident in an endless search for a vision of reality. Luca’s path is part of a post-romantic approach to nature, and is evident in an endless search for a vision of reality.
Stefano Susinno, art critic, in “View and landscape”, points out that for many, both artist and spectator, landscape might be considered either “an escape from the incidental, a call to universal themes in the presence of restless Nature or alternatively a thing of comfort; the home of myth or the sublime theatre of human passions”.
Herein are contained all the often misleading difficulties relating to the aesthetic canons of “genre” and how to separate aesthetics from mere theoretical indications.
This is even more evident in the current contemporary scene in which a fierce iconoclasm against the figurative in art, contrasts with the desire for a “return to painting” in a postmodern revision, supported by the need for inner contemplative reading, historically ranging from hyper-realism, to transavantgardism and anachronism.
Far from such contemporary conflicts Luca Raimondi holds firm to a figurative approach, maintaining the highest regard for the lessons of the Old Masters and adding a taste for classicism in line with his own satisfying visual ideas. This is a stand point totally in opposition to the every day scenario of insistent technological erosion and criminal ecological degradation which surrounds us and offends our human sensibilities.

So, from his emotional approach in the landscapes to his still life paintings, which in their timelessness make a nod to the poignant “chiaroscuro” canvases of the magisterial Jean-Baptiste Chardin (see the two oils on board of 2012: Wine, pears and an unfinished painting and Three oranges and a jar), everything seems to want to draw from nature, in the search for a precise tension between stability, the tempered quality of the pigments, between reflections and sounds.