Luisa Catucci/ Luisa Catucci

Luisa Catucci is a Berlin-based Italian illustrator, graphic designer and photographer born in 1976 in Rome.

Luisa Catucci’s Background

Luisa Catucci graduated from the Sapienza University and received her MA in Graphic Design from the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome. She had lived in the Capital of Italy until 2005 when she moved to Berlin.
In Rome Luisa worked as a freelance graphic designer for private and independent professionals, editing brands and web sites. She collaborated with many graphic design and illustration studios including Meccanografici Associati, Studio Finizio, Katò, and RotaLab. She has realized many children’s books, comics and book’s covers for different editors, including Edizioni EO, Edizioni Quintessenza, Seguier Editeur, and Burp Production.

Catucci’s Oeuvre

Combining photography and digital collage with classic, illustrative elements, Luisa Catucci brings together historical and mythological figures, and models from contemporary subcultures. In Catucci’s creative mixed-media works, girls with tattoos and body piercings are juxtaposed against historical references, bringing the roots of Western culture into a modern frame. Maintaining a pointed, art-historical context, her pieces are laced with psychological and pop-cultural references. For example, her series of artworks titled Myths & Legends was born out of a research on the feminine figures of the Mediterranean mythology, Fairy Tales revisits the main characters of ancient fairy tales, and It’s All Laszlo’s Fault is inspired by the works of a Hungarian painter, photographer and professor in the Bauhaus school Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Cell63 Art Gallery

In September 2009, Luisa has opened Cell63 artplatform in Berlin. Firstly, she thought it would be her own atelier with a showroom where she could display her pieces, but her friends liked the space and asked to show there as well. Catucci organized several exhibitions and realized that she really likes it, so she became a curator and director of the gallery named after number 63, which in the Italian traditional numerology, is the protector number of artists and dreamers. For the past six years, Cell 63 has exhibited a large range of emerging artists from different paltarts of the world. It shows artworks from different backgrounds, including illustration, painting, installation, sculpture, photography, and graphic design. Cell63 has been included in art fairs such as the Kunstsalon Berlin, Art Verona in Northern Italy, and the Blooom fair in Cologne.

Luisa Catucci lives and works in Berlin, Germany.