statement

Tony Luciani was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1956. The artist, growing up in Toronto, was able to partake in the best possible creative education. After Central Technical High School (4 year art program), Sheridan Community College (1 year art program), and the Ontario College of Art from 1975 to 1978, Tony received his degree along with post graduate study in OCA's off-campus program in Florence, Italy.

Luciani's work is an investigation into the impact of uneasiness and distortion inherent in the painted image: as it is received by the viewer and in his own relationship to the image.

Luciani has been working as an artist fulltime for thirty-five years, and his work has been described as "interpretive realism" and as "unconventionally surreal." This may be because Tony is precise in the manipulation of the medium and many of his compositional paintings are drawn directly from life, although his painting is always a response to the subject, rather than simply its re-presentation.

In Luciani's overarching project of experiencing and communicating the unease of the everyday, his work is in dialogue with, for example, the paintings of Christiane Pflug, Lucian Freud and Antonio Lopez Garcia.

Tony Luciani is represented by Loch Gallery in Toronto/Winnipeg/Calgary.

His work is in important private and corporate collections throughout Canada and internationally.

bio

born: 1956, Toronto, Canada

education

Ontario College of Art, AOCA, 1977

selected awards/honors

Ontario Arts Council Grant, 2010

Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, 1989

Canada Council 'B' Grant, 1980

George A. Reid Scholarship Award, Ontario College of Art, 1977

selected publications

AGAVE Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 1, Summer/Fall 2013, Cover Painting

Art & Beyond, Vol. 11, July/August, 2013, Back Cover Painting

selected solo or two-person exhibits

The Art of Tony Luciani, Wellington County Museum & Archives, Fergus, Ontario, Canada, 2012

Transitions, Durham Public Art Gallery, Durham, Ontario, Canada, 2010

From Da Vinci to Freud, Galerie Crescent Contemporain, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2007

Layered Reality, Loch Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2005

selected group shows

MEAM; Museu Europeu d'Art Moderno, Figurativas '13, Barcelona, Spain, 2013

The Kingston Prize; Canada's National Juried Portrait Competition, travelling, 2013

'AIRS' Federation of Canadian Artists Juried Competition, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 2013

Best of the Contemporaries, Loch Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2011