1941

Lillo Messina was born in Messina on the l9th of January and

spent his youth in a location situated on the Paradise beach.

His link with the sea, a strong and physical presence, was made

stronger by a family tradition: his grandfather, his father and his

uncles were all men of the sea.

In the same city he began his artistic studies, in the Art Institute,

continued later in Reggio Calabria.

1961

He moves to Rome and frequents The Academy of Fine Arts, to

study pointing. His teachers were first, Pippo Rizzo and later, Mino

Maccari.

While he followed his academic studies, he began his artistic

research. Here we find his first Roman pointings, bringing us to

fragments of pastures, landscapes,figures, urban scenes, still lives,

where the light penetrates the image, firing the contours of the

froms and the colours.

1964

He has his first personal show in the Galleria San Marco in Rome,

and the critical text of the catalogue is presented by Renato

Civello, who captures in a direct manner the significance of these

early works. 'Singing with colour on the reluctance of the forms'.

An auroral innocence of being which pushes him towards an

innovation which does not refuse the past. His concept of pointing

flals in the area of European figurativism.

1965

He participates in the 1Oth Exhibition of Figurative Art at the

Palazzo delle Esposizioni of Rome, organized by Durbé, Ferrari

and Menna.

1967

He tokes part in the II National Exhibition of Figurative Art

Italian Works in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni of Rome.

1969

He begins a long series of personal exhibitions which brings him

cycle. They are the Black Cathedrals, Totems, Magic Mirrors. In

the presentation of the catalogue for the exhibition at the Galleria

d'arte Moderna of Grosseto, Ugo Attardi writes "(...) running and

shouting is that which brings us right to the struggle, it tells us of

a destiny full of efforts and one perceives the passing of Time, the

mutation of the material and of the spirit. Everything happens and

figures under and against a sky without past and future limits:

idea-image. a feeling of greatness, of certainty and delusion'. And

again di Genova, in the same catalogue 'from the Medioeval

period and after pointing struggles aguinst monsters. Firstly

against the conditioning monsters of conscience, then also against

the oppressive monsters of society. Overall the lines along which

this struggle occurs go from Bosch to Ernst, and from Goya to

Picasso. The pointing of Lillo Messina struggles more against

internal monsters than those of illuminism against the monsters of

political power, both religious and economic. So it is not against

the dream of the reason created monsters that Messina intends to

struggle, but against those monsters which lurk in the profound

'id', avid residues of the Medioeval which are difficult to obliterate

form the level of consciousness. Hieronymus Bosch is the distant

roat of the work of Messina". In the same year he participates in

the 10th National Exhibition of Figurative Art: Italian Works, again

at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni of Rome.

1970

Messina has a personal show at the Galleria Ciovasso of Milan.

Emilio Sidoti, in his presentation in the catalogue writes '(...) the

colour always shows the affective component of an artist and it is

the faithful mirror of his spontaneous sensitivity. This applies also

to Messina. His colours are very inviting and joyous, not with standing

the dramatic intentions of the author, they tell us immediately

that Messina is not one who says no to existence.

In the same year he exhibits at the Galleria Schreiber of Brescia.

Writing in the newspaper of Brescia Elvira Cassa Salvi says: "In

that very actual zone of a new form of pointing both lucid and

surrealistic, in conflict with a world in the grip of a technological

enigma, both, vivacious and joyful, in contrast with that sense of

nigthmare and heavy threat, above all from the void spaces.

Messina manages to represent, in an unusual manner, modern

alienation. Not yet thirty, he reveals an uncommon capacity for

clarity, of imageful evidence".

1971

He is invited to participate at the Xl Premio Nazionale Capo

d'Orlando and aiter to Turin for the exhibition 'Cento Pittori per

il Socialismo' organized by Mario De Micheli.

1972

He has a personal show at the Galleria I1 Molino of Rome, another

at the Galleria Valguarnera of Bagheria, and yet another at

Catania at the Galleria Il Punto.

The works of this period are of a desperate surrealism, coloured

by the graphic tradition and it is right that this is so, given the age

of the artist, which does not give him yet means to express the

feeling of love-hate for the world. It is for this that the exhibitions

of Messina now have an element of irony which liberates the

against of first contact. Evidently the Sicilian artist, away from his

roots has found against the negative aspects of the technological

civilization. if he had pointed red sunsets of Sicily, the mountains

coloured by bunches of ginestre, he would have used the same

chromatic gradation which he uses today to render lightening

quick the anxiety which oppresses them.

1973

He exhibits at the 'Nuova Pesa' of Rome, a prestigious gallery of

the Seventies. It is an exhibition rich of works of a large dimension

based on the theme of ecology, among them of particular interest

and disturbance, a series of nine pointings mensuring 50 x 70 cm.,

each linked to the other, representing a single theme: in the

porpose iconography, the living being, whose segments go together

with the products of the most aseptic design, having still a human

nature, but they are already marked in a irremediable manner by

a series of mutations imposed by the environment. A kind of

continuation of the discourse poltronuomo proposed by Alberto

Savinio, the spectacle of a form and of a substance acquired from

beings which have become monuments to themselves, adorned with

legs and arms on the domestic pedestal of a grand armchair of

those years. In the rendering of Messina the man-individual

spreads himself, he stretches himself, like obeying a duty according

to the always more rigid ritual, also if attractive. He must consider

himself to be the individual most relaxed, in the best armchair, in

the best house, in front of the most fascinating coloured screen,

across which, in order not to think, pass vague images of remote

worlds. But underneath he knows that in the same house, in that

near, at the other side of the city or the globle another being,

millions of others, are stretched out on similar armchairs, in front

of similar screens, on which pass only ephemeral colours.

1974

Apart from various shows in various Italian cities, he exhibits for

the first time at the Bedford House Gallery of London. Max Wykes

Jyoce in the International Herald Tribune "... strange, yet perfectly

conclusive way of pointing a landscape, at times meadowy, at times

marine, where now appear volatile and animalesque beings, then

humanoid shadows. Unusable machines, apparently abandoned, or

their components, violently attack a sweet green landscape. These

components circulate in an able manner to arrive at a satisfactory

visuality that suggests an interdependence and mutual indifference

between all its elements. A metaphysical form of pointing which

creates curiosity, though always remaining inside the traditional

Italian Philosophy.

He participates, aiter this, in the exhibition 'Giornate Italiane a

Mosca e nell'URSS".

1975

He is invited by the critic, Giorgio Seveso, in collaboration with

the Galleria Ciovasso of Milan to participate in the exhibition

"Trent'anni dopo - Pittori Italiani per la Resistenza'. Giorgio di

Genova inserts the work of Messina in the book 'Le realtà del

Fantastico (L'Arte in Italia dal Dopoguerra ad Oggi)". Editori

Riuniti.

In the same year he participates with three works of a large

dimension in the X Quadriennale d'Arte di Roma, at the Palazzo

delle Esposizioni.

1976

This is a particularly active year, rich in personal shows held at

Lamezia Terme, Livorno, Mantova, Roncoferraro (MN), Parma,

Milan and at the end, for the second time, in London.

Persenting the artist, Pierre Rouve writes 'Messina remains inside

the confines of reality: the excessive dose of reality is injected

arcoss a hypnotic calligraphy; that which is pninted acquires a

new significance through the way in which it is pointed. Exactness

generates nightmares. Isolation conceives the desolation. All the

vital illusions are absorbed hy the unnatural hardness of the

natural things. "La varie vie est absente", from this combination

of broken images at low tide 'when the water recedes'; Rimbaud

meets Eliot in the "desert land" of Lillo Messina which is also his

private 'season of inferno'; unnatural nature".

1977

An exhibition at the gallery Il Grifo in Rome, in the presentation

from which Mario Lunetta underlines "(...) a form of pointing, only

in appearance contemplative, that of the Sicilian artist; a form of

pointing in reality generously coid. A concept both creative and

analytical, which is required of every intellectual operation worthy

of the name. Because one sees how, from pointing to pointing,

Messina questions the certainties acquired in the preceding phases,

at a formal level on the lines of an interrupted alteration of the

guined harmony".

He has a personal show at the Centro d'arte Condor of Palermo.

1979

After showing at Bologna, in the Galleria San Paolo, and aiter

wards in Rome at the Galleria Il Grifo, he begins another intense

period of confrontations, giving numerous personal shows in many

cities, among which are Bologna, Cosenza, Reggio Calabria and

Città di Castello.

His artistic personality is clearly mature, across the colour which

underlines with its incisive sensuality the imponent element of the

from, being the only voice for this, the symbols of the universe of

Messina are, at the same time, hoth calm and disturbing.

1983

He is commissioned to do a work for the Gas Condait trans-

mediterranean which is later illustrated in the magazine published

by ENI.

The sea, already present in his works since the middle of the

seventies, becomes always stronger, like a narrative element. Above

all it is the poetic element which separates the artist from his link

with the preceding symbology of a surrealistic character which

Messina pointed betwecn the sixties and the seventies. A surrealism,

which through its own personal code, had brought him to

recount, across a kind of element of the bizzarre and exaspiration,

which never gives place to emotional chans. The sea moves the

filters of his pointing, as if it pushes him, always more insistently,

to focus his eye and his hand beyond, to look for and to find who

knows what state of the saul, what image, or what element which

is lacking. Now it is the sea which the absolute protagonist.

1984

The gallery, Ca' d'Oro of Rome houses a personal exhibition.

Franco Solmi, presenting the artist, writes "this fascinating voyage

can go from the regions of an antique myth, and almost uncap

true oble, to the lost beoches of the present, wherever the relics of

an immense and superh technology find themselves trapped, generating

forms of devilish mechanisms. This is done by presenting the

nightmare of crystal skies, of lucid seas, of mineral lights, of earth

where the green is impregnated with violent yellows, and full of

hidden reds. The earth of an island, I would say, on which the

favlour of a fable permeates, thick and glassy, like in the pointing

of popular legends".

1985

He is invited by the Centre Arti Visive Modigliani of Scandicci (Fl)

to the exhibition "Omaggio a Dino Campana - Sulle orme della

chimera".

In the same year he participates in the exhibition of art "Pittura

nell'area meridionale" held at the Museo Civico of Rende (CS).

1987

He tokes part first in the exhibition "Voglia di Pace Autori contro

la violenza" in the County Council of Marzabotto (BO) and Sesto

Fiorentino (Fl), and later in the Painting Competition "Le città

della Magna Graecia" Rossano (CS).

1988

After participating in the International Competition of Painting

and Graphics Ibla Mediterraneo, at the County Council of Modica

(RG), the County Council of Alia (PA) puts on a personal show in

the County Library. After he takes part in the I Exhibition of

Painting and Sculpture in the Mediterranean, at Riposto (CT).

1989

He taìkes part in the exhibition "Presenze Siciliane" at the Monumental

Complex San Michele a Ripa in Rome, organized by

Claudio Strinati, Sergio Rossi and Gianfranco Proietti.

The gallery La Gradiva of Rome houses a personal show entitled

'In viaggio con Ulisse'. They are essentially pointings of large

dimension, a sweet adventure between metaphor and reality. It is

arcoss the symbology of this mythalogical figures that the artist

expresses himself. But it is a mythology which transcends the

mythology itself, considered from the classical point of view. It is

a mythology of the daily life where "the heroism comes from the

rael which entraps it (...) heroic because this is the doubt which

hammers the soul, the eternal mysterious sphinx, the impossability

of reconecting the economy of the visible, not with standing whether

familiar or etherodox, to the preordinated convivents of the cosmic

mystery; as Civello writes in the catalogue. It is here where the

hero of Homer and that of Dante are identified with Ulysees of

Jyoce. The eternal wandering to return to ones native land, the

first to know which pashes one beyond becomes the wandering

inside ourselves to try to find the truth, the island-buoy, which

justifies our daily being. All this across pictorical images which

technically, with a more profound reading, cannot be considered

only related to the question of hyper-realism.

Domenico Guzzi writes: "(...) We will not be right in evaluating

the image of the pointer according to the rhythm of certain hyper

realities. And here our thoughts turn not so much to the Americans,

but rather to the Germans of the group "Zebra", which while

maintaining an objective relationship, they have not made them

into an element exclusively obsessive. For reasons of local culture

- in a word - of European sensitivity. Messina belongs to that area

of artists which we could be tempted to describe simply as artists

of the truth. Always, of course, passed through the filter of

intellectual analysis".

In writing about the exhibition Dario Micacchi speaks of pointing

of subtle phases from one state of mind to another state of mind:

neat cuts of sagomes and colours which irradiate light in the

cosmic light. The eye of the pointer is penetrating, obsessive,

teaching the pieces of grass and the flowers growing between one

sotne and another; the objects leit on the sand or on dock, the

lacerated or new cord, the seagulls high in the sky and the seagulls

in turbans which pose here and there. The vision is nett and

neo-metaphysic. The sense of time which is poinful; the nostalgia

of an uncontaminated age which is quite strong".

1992

The gallery Ca d'Oro invites the artist to the IV Salone D'Arte

Moderna e Contemporanea "Arte Roma '92" for the realization

of one of the Wunderkammers, called 'I1 mare nella stanza', which

atierwards is presented in one of the rooms of the gallery itself.

The pointer realizes a few works created deliberately for an

evinronment, a refined and curious play between objects of a

marine metallargic nature (portholes, brass handles, iron getty

holos) and pictorial images. Over this sort of osmosis a particular

relationship is installed between the work and the maker where the

three-dimensional play assumes the quality of something live

and real, thanks to the recouperation of these elements and of their

use.

And it is also clear, the voice of the artist himself, in the catalogue,

presents his own poetic component, and affirms, what is the island

buoy, what it represents. It is a landing, a possibility of ransom 'along

the route incised by the mind to cancel the grey and the fear".

1993

Undoubtedly the preceding personal show of Lillo Messina has

represented an enormous advance ahead of the artist in his

research. The impact with the chromatic acceleration is strong but

this does not signify a break with his artistic past. Instead it puts

in evidence the common thread through all his work.

If the beginnings were characterized by 'sing with colour on the

reluctance of the forms', now this reluctance becomes other forms

to which, like all the forms in the imagination corresponds to an

acceleration of the emotions which in a space free from the

reassuring coordinates of our reality, finds continuous breath and

not a block. An acceleration which is also intellectual, and which,

if before seemed to look for the true, then comprehended that ones

own true, as Strinati declared, is the truth of vision.

1994

He exhibits his paintings at the M.G.P. Arte Contemporanea.

In this exhibition space the coreographer Atha Atziioannoy

realizes a dance performance where each dancer symbolizes an island,

which is painted on the dancers' costumes by Lillo Messina.

The dancers display their quest for their own shape and colour

through gestures and movements that compose and

recompose the spacial symmetries of his works.

1998

He participates in the exhibition

"The Painted Island: Sicily, Fifty Years of Nature and Landscapes"

that takes place in Rome, at the Risorgimento Museum.

The municipality of Piombino, together with the Centre of Cultural Activity,

organizes a monographical exhibition devoted to Lillo Messina

whose title is "Sea 'beyond' sea". It takes place in the rooms of Palazzo Appiani

and includes about fifty large-scale paintings. In his presentation of the artist,

Aldo Gerbino writes: " Lillo Messina and his memory are led by a sort of yearning for emersion.

A watery nature pushes him and sweeps him away joyously and

playfully with its biological fragments made of unlikely radiolarians and

pigmented organic objects, arranged by an invisible though wilful hand in the whirlpool of chaos.

This yearning finds its substance among these engendering elements,

in this magmatic ancestral spiral, charming flame that rises between the sky and the sea.

This is what peoples the longing that lives and smoulders in the heart of this Mediterranean artist."

2003

He exhibits his paintings at the Conference Palace in Montesilvano.

The title of the exhibition is "Mirabilis Insula Picta", that is,

Painting as the Island of Wonders.

Here astonishment rises as well as the moment of suspense while approaching

the paintings, the physical sensation that one feels while moving from

one island to another as if flying, alighting now and then. It is a calm and quiet flight.

The seer's impact of Lillo Messina's painting is first physical then intellectual.

He tells us about his need to keep on searching for his own island

that is not to be found yet and that, perhaps, he does not want to find.

And he does it through the rigour and sharpness of his images.

The longed island is the island that is not meant to be. His painting openly unfolds like a journey.

But if the journey involves a return to the originary place, to Messina this return

means to reappropriate former certainties now filtered by experience.

At present the artist is more daring in the layout of his paintings,

as the subsequent exhibitions in Rome ( 2004 ) and Castrovillari ( 2005 ) show.

His works are focused on the detail rather than on the wholeness.

By doing this, he wants to suggest something beyond the canvas.

He now neglects easily defined shapes and the island becomes more and more abstract.

His chromatic sense gets new, as in the oranges and purples, his set of colours

widens up perhaps to give this endless journey greater breath and strength.