My Story
What would an artist be without his stories?
My full name is Leonardo Cecchini. As a boy growing up in Italy, I answered to Nanni and, in those early years, my father noticed my artistic abilities. I remember meals where I had a fork in one hand and a pencil in the other. Papa was an art critic and a collector of art and antiques. Can you imagine our house? I was surrounded by beauty, fantasy, architecture, and above all, love.
In my teens, Papa was determined that I develop my own style and not be distracted by trying to please instructors. He found the best school for me that let me experiment. In addition to art, my passions were swimming and tasting the joys of love and life.
To succeed in life, one needs someone to believe in you.
While I had many people who believed in me, I think back to Papa. When he died in 1990, I went back to Italy and my sister and I started to clean out the house. We found a folder. In it were all the drawings I did as a child. Papa had kept every one of them. He knew then, he believed in me. I sat there and wept, missing his strong hand on my shoulder.
As an adult, I have lived, laughed, and lost. It's curious how creativity bursts from the hands to the canvas. It comes in times of illuminating joy and of darkening despair. I think most artists must feel like this, art comes from the soul.
My work is raw and unfiltered and my compositions are based on flashes of people and events on the timeline in my mind. I believe that being a world traveler, soaking up the culture of each place and people enhances my work.
Being Italian born, I have a following there with collectors in all walks of life. Collectors (each one becomes a dear friend) are found worldwide, and happily, some of my work is exhibited in the USA, Italy, France, and Switzerland.
Loving golf and sun, I make my home in Lighthouse Point, Florida
Art on BRiC Walls -Boca Museum of Art
Nanni was selected to participate in this juried exhibition of "artists to watch."
Representing a dynamic cross-section of talent from Broward and Palm Beach Counties, this juried exhibition organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art in association with CP Group reinforces the Boca Museum's commitment to local residents, provides professional exhibition opportunities for emerging artists, and reveals a provocative glimpse of the state of art today.
Un piccolo assaggio (A little Taste)
My Background
My Inspiration
My Background
Italy. I was young, maybe four or five. My father noticed first; I had an uncanny ability to reproduce on paper what I was seeing with my eyes. Papa encouraged my artistic side. I wasn't easy since I also loved to swim, steal a ride on a Vespa, travel, love women, and taste life. Seeing the world, experiencing love and loss, joy and sorrow... I regret nothing and am grateful for each new day.
My Medium
My Inspiration
My Background
While most of my original work is in acrylic oils, I discovered through the pandemic that clients wanted to give reproductions of the work they purchased as gifts. I also realize that these true-to-art reproductions on canvas and paper, called a giclée (gee-clay) are new ways to enable more collectors to appreciate my work.
My Inspiration
My Inspiration
My Inspiration
As a man ages, his mind wanders back to his youth, to the people he loved and to the mind and time bending adventures that bring joy and sadness rushing like a bullet to the present.
Life is my inspiration. The way light and shadow and color work to tease the senses and emotions, this inspires me.