Lepri Stanislao

Born 1905, Rome, Italy, died 1980, Paris, France.

Stanislao Lepri is one of the great unknowns of recent art history. Even during his lifetime, only a selected circle of collectors, art writers and dealers appreciated and presented his work to the public in exhibitions, catalogues and monographs.

Originally Lepri came from a conservative, aristocratic house. His family belonged to the hermetic circle of the “black nobility” in Rome, who were loyally devoted to the Pope. Stanislao, on the other hand, distanced himself from the social constraints of his class, and choose to lead the life of a “peintre maudit” in Paris in a “ménage à trois” with Leonor Fini and the Polish literary figure, Constantin Jelenski, a life which completely freed him from all restricting conventions.

He was capable of creating an utterly strange metaphysical and magical world, a world not only filled with dreamlike, melancholic exoticism and ubiquitous demonic powers, pervaded with satirizing irony and despair, but also with deep human emotion. The certainties and dogmas of the past, he makes clear, have lost their validity. What remains are the governing powers of fate that act on everything and against which Lepri’s protagonists are helplessly pitted on the enigmatic stage of their lives. Nothing is as it seem, and in order to grasp reality in its true form, the painter draws mythical visions of another, an extra-real metaphysical world beyond the real appearances in the forms of reality itself. Stanislao Lepri is the author and creator of utterly strange, metaphysical extra-worlds, ultramondi metafisici, in which he raises “the unbelievable, the ambiguous, the contrary, the dark metaphor, the allusion, the astute, the sophism” to symbolic figures of a new, seemingly hermetically coded reality pervaded with mysteries that still hold a deep, inner truth: of these there are not only one, but several, indeed, countless mutually contradicting truths, all of them with their own legitimacy. The world is a labyrinth that eludes every simple, rational, uncomplicated penetration.

PAINTINGS

la_lecon_de_vol

La Leçon de Vol, 1978
Oil on canvas
100 x 73 cm

Stanislao LEPRI - l'apprentissage_BD

L’Apprentissage, 1977
Oil on canvas
100 x 82 cm

STANISLAO LEPRI_CONDAMNATION_1977_HST_100x73 cm_BD

Condamnation, 1977
Oil on canvas
100 X 73 cm

STANISLAO LEPRI_LE COUPLE_1965_HST_65X101CM

Le Couple, 1965
Oil on canvas
65 x 101 cm

20201201_110948

Brocante, 1977
Oil on canvas
97 X 132 cm

L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UNE POULE_1969_HST_65x92CM

L’Après-Midi d’une Poule, 1969
Oil on canvas
65 x 92 cm

STANISLAO LEPRI_LE GARDIEN_1975_HST_100X73CM

Le Gardien, 1975
Oil on canvas
100 X 73 cm

STANISLAO LEPRI_LE GÉANT SURVEILLÉ_1976_HST_73X92CM

Le Géant Surveillé, 1976
Oil on canvas
73 x 92 cm

Stanislao LEPRI - Langage Nocturne, 1975, HST, 74 x 51 cm

Langage Nocturne, 1975
Oil on canvas
74 x 51 cm

DRAWINGS

D13 PORTE DE SECOURS_1972_encre de chine bistre_40,3x33cm

La Porte de Secours, 1972
Ink on paper
40,3 x 33 cm

D78 LE DIABLE VAMPIRE_1957

Le Diable Vampire, 1978
Ink and oil on paper
43,5 x 32 cm

D57 LA PYRAMIDE_1959_encre de chine_41x32cm

La Pyramide, 1959
Ink on paper
41 x 32 cm

D49 RONDE DE PRINTEMPS_1978_encre de chine et plume_39x28cm

La Ronde de Printemps, 1978
Ink on paper
39 x 28 cm

D54 BACCHUS_1972_encre de chine et plume_53x45cm

Bacchus, 1972
Ink on paper
53 x 45 cm

D64 RENCONTRE DANS LA FORET_1980_encre de chine_66x58cm

Rencontre dans le Forêt, 1980
Ink on paper
66 x 58 cm

D84 LA TOUR_1968_aquarelle et encre_43x31cm

La Tour, 1968
Ink and watercolor on paper
41 x 31 cm

LE PUIT DES AMOURS_1976_encre de chine et plume_57x38cm

Le Puit des Amours,
Ink on paper
39 x 28 cm

MUSÉES ET COLLECTIONS

STAGE WORKS

 

1958

Ménagerie, Ballet (sur le thème de “Lulu” de Wedekind). Musique de Klebe. Chorégraphie de Tatiana Gsowski. Opéra de Berlin-Ouest

Die Letze Blume, Ballet. Musique de Nicolas Nabokov. Chorégraphie de Tatiana Gsowski. Opéra de Berlin Ouest

Apollon Musagète, Ballet. Musique de I. Stravinsky. Chorégraphie de Tatiana Gsowski. Opéra de Berlin-Ouest

Les Carabiniers de B. Joppolo. Adaptation de J. Audiberti. Mise en scène de Michel de Ré. Théâtre de l’Alliance Française

 

1957

Armida de Lulli pour le Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. Mise en scène de M. Lalande

 

1953

Chi è di Scena?Spectacle-revue de Anna Magnani. Décors (costumes de Leonor Fini)

 

1950

Armida de Lulli. Mai Florentin. Théâtre Municipal de Florence. Costumes (décors de F. Clerici)

 

1949

L’Oeuf à la Coque, Ballet. Musique de Maurice Thiriet. Chorégraphie Roland Petit. Ballets de Paris. Théâtre Marigny

 

1946

Les Blanchisseuses, Ballet. Musique de Vernon Duke. Chorégraphie Boris Kochno. Compagnie des Ballets des Champs-Elysées

MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS

 

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France

Museum of Modern Art, NYC, USA

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italie

Musée d’Art Moderne, Lodz, Poland