Piero Guccione's figurative yet innovative paintings are on show in Rome as part of an important new exhibition devoted to the contemporary Sicilian artist.
The National Gallery of Modern Art is hosting an exhibit of over 100 works by Guccione, who has achieved huge international critical acclaim but remains little known among the wider public.
Although Guccione has been painting since the 1960s, his lifelong love of traditional figurative and landscape styles hampered his reputation in the early years.
Art critic Maurizio Calvesi portrayed Guccione as someone who had broken with convention by using convention.
''He focused on figurative art at a time when it was forbidden to even speak of it,'' he commented.
Speaking at the inauguration, Culture Undersecretary Francesco Giro described Guccione's career as a ''search for something absolutely pure, which transcends the human experience''.
Guccione, he added, ''does not allow himself to be influenced by the frantic pace of modern life''.
Also at the inauguration, Guccione discussed why he had steered clear of the art world's trends over the last 40 years, explaining that painting was an instinctive process for him.
''I don't believe the mind alone is enough to create art,'' he said, disagreeing with a famous comment by Marcel Duchamp.
''It's good to see and think, but my idea is that feeling should be linked to emotion, the fruit of emotion, which the hand then translates into an artwork''.
Although Guccione has experimented with different subjects over the years, he has continually returned to paintings awash with sea and sky.
His colours range from the brilliant gold and turquoise of sand and sunlit sea, through deep aquamarine and into the reds and indigos of evening and night.
The exhibition contains a number of these seascapes, many of which on small canvases, yet all convey both a deep sense of peace and an inner vitality.
''I only paint what is in front of me,'' Guccione explained. ''And the only view I have from my house in Sicily is the sea.
''In 1980 I painted a work called Ultimo Mare (Final Sea), a title which I chose because I was certain I would paint no more seascapes - and yet here they still are, as I continue to paint them''.
The exhibition runs at Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art until January 25.
