Reference - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The book to accompany his 1986 exhibition. Described by Diane Waldman as a 20th century mystic, her essay groups Cucchi with Jannis Kounellis and Joseph Bueys and links the artist's work to Caravaggio and El Greco. She dramatically enforces the seriousness of Cucchi in her closing paragraph - 'Cucchi is the painter as seer. both demon and saint, possessor and possessed, he is at once the creator and subject of his tale. He is the painter as mad visionary, participant in and witness to the nether world from which one can emerge after a ritual of fire and purification, to the realm of the sublime.' Mostly black and white images, the flashes of colour from reproductions of Cucchi's paintings are startling and immediately bring to mind William Blake. The last section includes photos of the fabrication and installation of the work made for the Guggenheim rotunda.
