(b Ancona, 1947). Italian conceptual and performance artist. At 17 he mounted his own exhibition (1964; Ancona, Gal. D.D.), before moving to Rome where he was influenced by Arte Povera. His one-man show (1969; Rome, Gal. Attico), for which he published an obituary announcing his death, included traces of ‘invisible objects’: a square outlined on the floor constituted Invisible Pyramid. Such dematerialization was associated with mortality, with which de Domenicis was primarily concerned, investigated through autobiography and self-portraiture, as well as through juxtapositions of Urvasi, the Hindu goddess of beauty, and the partially divine Ghilgamesh, who sought immortality in vain. Invisibility became a paradoxical and primary conceptual means: D’io (‘of me’/‘God’, 1971) filled the Galleria L’Attico with a recording of laughter. Having included live animals in his Zodiac exhibition (1970; Rome, Gal. Attico), de Domenicis increasingly used people to embody such concepts as ageing (e.g. the opposition of a young and an old man at Incontri Internazionale d’Arte, Rome, 1971). However, the appearance of a Downs Syndrome boy alongside the ‘invisible objects’ in The Second Possibility for Immortality (The Universe is Immobile) at the Venice Biennale of 1972 caused outcry and his exhibition’s closure. He continued to address immortality and the Sumerian myth in the 1980s in an extended series of paintings but avoided disclosing biographical details or participating in monographic exhibitions or publications.

• De Domenicis, Gino
  • Italy, §III, 7(ii): Painting, from 1946