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Nicola Cuppari
Nicola Cuppari: Blacksmith and Artist
The artist Nicola Cuppari (Nicola Giovanni Battista Cuppari) was born in Isola di Capo Rizzuto, Calabria, on February 5, 1964, following a complicated birth.
Since childhood, Nicola has developed a great passion for life, despite the many difficulties and privations he has to face and which leave a deep mark on him. The divorce of his parents, at the age of eight, means that he has a more intimate relationship with his paternal grandparents. Thus, during adolescence, the death of his grandmother due to an illness leads Cuppari to feel, or rather to try again, a strong sense of loneliness and abandonment, the same that he perceived with the removal of his mother.
The difficulties encountered, however, lead him to face life with great determination, determined as he is not to be bent by events, but to understand and accept all the possibilities and facets of existence. After attending a two-year course at a professional school in the field of applied mechanics, the young Cuppari immediately enters the world of work, doing manual and seasonal jobs of different types: from bricklayer to farm laborer, from waiter and pizza chef to painter. Until, once he reaches the age of majority, the father induces him to leave home, wishing to make him strong and independent. So he decides to leave, with the hope of having job opportunities more suited to his nature and his wishes. His first experience is in Imola, where he finds work as a welder; however his employer fires him, explaining that he can aspire to something better.
With the great determination that always characterizes him, Cuppari continues to work in the steel industry, and at the age of twenty-three he becomes an independent craftsman, so he can afford to work in numerous companies as an external worker, called to intervene in the resolution of complicated and important projects. . He went on like this for five years, during which he became an established professional and had the opportunity to open his own workshop in Faenza, with his own employees. This leads him to have the satisfaction of buying a villa in a rural area of Romagna.
The turning point in his life occurs on the day when, to satisfy the insistence of his friends, he participates in the exhibition of the famous artist Raccagni, in Castel San Pietro.
Cuppari remains subjugated by the works that Raccagni had created in the course of his life; he is so fascinated by them that he feels transported to a new, unusual interior dimension: those works have awakened something in him, something that leads him to reflect for days and days on the emotions that art has made him feel. Having acquired these sensations, Cuppari finally decides to put himself to the test, creating a painting with iron, putting himself to work without having artistic expectations to show to anyone, but only with the desire to create something for himself. Satisfied with the first attempt, he completes others, but solely for the furnishings of his house and almost with a feeling of jealousy
towards their own artistic artifacts. Despite his reluctance to show his works, friends visiting the villa notice his paintings, which, with the play of light and shadow, manage to have three-dimensional and iridescent effects. Friends convince him of his talent: he, with great humility, did not realize that he had taken the path of art, and yet, even mindful of the sad events of childhood and adolescence, he finally feels a sense of happiness and of acceptance.
In 2008, Cuppari decides to inaugurate his first personal website, using a marketing expert, a specialist in the sector, who, seeing his works, explains to him that he can really aspire to be something more than a simple blacksmith, as he presents himself. He has proof of this when his wrought iron paintings are exhibited in the Modigliani Gallery, which had contacted him to set up an exhibition, considering him a full-fledged sculptor artist. To date, Modigliani is the only gallery in which Cuppari has exhibited his works, but, thanks to that occasion, he met his first important client: even the great actor George Clooney, on a visit to Italy.
From a painting with vine shoots and bunches of grapes, Cuppari has the idea of creating an author’s gazebo for Clooney’s Italian residence: Villa Oleandra, on Lake Como. Clooney’s appreciation led him to fame, so much so that he was called upon by important new customers to create other gazebos for exclusive resorts, hotels in Italy, as well as in Switzerland and in Monte Carlo.
Among his works, Cuppari boasts a gazebo for Villa Rufelli in Ariccia (an ancient and prestigious place where Bernini also resided), another for the Hotel Palace in Merano, designed by a well-known Paris architect, a staircase for his granddaughter by the minister Scajola in Imperia: works following which he had numerous requests that have increased his fame.
Today Nicola Cuppari continues with his works, always putting himself on the line, experimenting with new iron working techniques. In his works, lights and shadows play together, capturing the observer’s eye and showing all the emotions that lie behind the artistic creation.