Luigi Malice

Luigi Malice was an Italian abstract painter and sculptor, born in Naples and long associated with Calabria, where he taught, directed an academy, and kept a house-studio on the Ionian coast. He died on October 14, 2026, at the age of 89, in his home-studio in Brancaleone. ReggioTV and English Wikipedia reported the death the same day.

He was born on March 14, 1937, in Naples. He trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli under Emilio Notte, and later worked with Domenico Spinosa, a leading figure of southern Italian Informal art. In the late 1950s he painted in an expressionist and figurative vein. Still life with figure won a Michetti Prize, and Ricordo di Spagna (Memory of Spain) was shown for the Posillipo Prize. In 1959 he helped found Naples' Organismo rappresentativo artistico nazionale, which he directed until 1962.

From the early 1960s he moved toward Arte Informale, using spatula colour and constructivist and post-cubist effects before lightening the palette under the influence of Calabrian and Mediterranean light. In 1963 he took a teaching post in Reggio Calabria and, with Luca Monaco and Ugo D'Ambrosi, helped introduce Informal ideas into a region still dominated by nineteenth-century painting. Collective and solo shows followed in Calabria and beyond. After 1968 he concentrated on sculpture-like works: waterproof cloth (tela cirie) on twisted plywood, related to Enrico Castellani, Agostino Bonalumi and Pino Pascali, and later ready-made Plexiglas panels. He showed at the New York Coliseum in 1968, at the Flaccovio Gallery in Palermo and the Santo Stefano Gallery in Venice, and held a Milan retrospective in 1984, the year he became principal of the Academy of Fine Arts in Reggio Calabria, a post he held until 1989 while teaching ornamental sculpture.

From the mid-1980s his painting returned to a lyrical neo-Informal language of Mediterranean colour and light. He exhibited at the Institut Francais Le Grenoble in Naples and in travelling shows in Venice and Florence. In 1992 he presented Percorsi 1965-1992 at the Royal Palace in Naples. His Metamorphosis 1979 entered the Museo delle generazioni italiane at Pieve di Cento, and works are also held at MAON Rende, CAM Casoria and other public collections. In 2011 he showed Tempesta di sabbia in the Calabrian section of the Italian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. He lived and worked in Brancaleone until his death. No cause of death was made public.