Domenico Gnoli was born in Rome in 1933. His father, Umberto Gnoli, was an art historian and Superintendent of Fine Arts in Perugia; his mother, Annie de Garrou, a painter and ceramist. Growing up immersed in the artistic and cultural milieu, he attended with his mother the drawing and engraving classes of Carlo Alberto Petrucci, director of the Calcografia Nazionale and later president of the Accademia di San Luca. In 1950, at just 17 years old, he exhibited the series of drawings Mes Chevaliers at La Cassapanca Gallery in Rome. The following year he was in Brussels for a group show on Italian graphic design organized by Petrucci.
Gnoli’s talent quickly earned recognition, with his set designs earning acclaim across Europe. In 1954, he showcased his work at the group exhibition Contemporary Italian Prints in Philadelphia. However, after just two years, he decided to leave behind his set designer’s career and the opportunities offered by the theater world, opting to focus on painting and what he deemed “essential”. Residing across London, New York, Paris, and Rome, he embarked on his journey as a self-taught artist, showing little interest in the informal approach of American painting. Instead, he drew inspiration from the Italian masters of Metaphysical art, including Giorgio Morandi and Carlo Carrà. In 1956, he held his inaugural American solo exhibition at the Sagittarius Gallery in New York, which was followed by his participation in group exhibitions across New York, Newark, and San Francisco.
In parallel, he wrote short stories, often accompanied by illustrations, and collaborated as an illustrator with various magazines and newspapers. In 1963, he embarked on an extended stay in Majorca, during which a profound revelation occurred. Gnoli pondered the inherent stagnancy of the perspective traditionally adopted by Western artistic traditions when observing landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. He began to question the feasibility of engaging with objects in a manner that would invigorate them with a new interest and from an innovative viewpoint. In September he executed the painting Dame de dos, or Buste robe grise, which marks a significant transition. Fascinated by a fabric used by the women of Majorca, rather than gluing it to the canvas support, he reproduces its pattern and texture with clarity. This marked the inception of the large-scale paintings that became emblematic of Gnoli’s distinctive style: intricate enlargements of mundane objects, ranging from clothing to the furnishings found in bourgeois homes. These works made their debut in 1964 at a solo exhibition held at the Gallerie André Schoeller in Paris. The following year he took part in the collective De Metaphisica organized by Galerie Jan Krugier in Geneva, along with works by De Chirico, De Pisis, Morandi and Carrà. In 1965 he returned permanently to Rome, where he frequented, among others, Giosetta Fioroni, Mario Schifano, Fabrizio Clerici, Balthus, Alberto Moravia and Dacia Maraini. In 1968, after exhibiting at the Grands et Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui show in Paris, he left for a trip to Eastern European countries. At the end of 1969 he opened an extensive solo show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, with forty works and five bronze sculptures, followed shortly afterwards by an exhibition at the Schmela Galerie in Düsseldorf. He died in April 1970, at the young age of thirty-six.