Gino Ceccarelli
“In my painting, I try to approach the Amazonian cosmovision, to understand it and express it through images. But this source of stories and myths is inexhaustible. The more one explores, the clearer it becomes that we have barely touched the surface.”
Gino Ceccarelli
A mythical cartography of the Amazon
The Amazon stands at the center of Gino Ceccarelli’s work, not as a backdrop, but as part of his own life story. His paintings draw on landscapes, stories, and visual traditions without seeking to explain or resolve them. Rather than depicting the forest naturalistically, Ceccarelli draws on his own experience and on the stories and myths of the Amazon.
Figures emerge from water, vegetation, shadow, and dream. Gods, protective animals, human faces, and plant forms meet in compositions that move freely between personal experience and myth. The images can feel sensual and unsettling at once; beauty and danger often lie close together.
Ceccarelli brings Amazonian experience into contemporary painting without treating the two as separate worlds. Flowing forms, shifting colors, and open pictorial spaces give his work a sense of movement and suspension. His Amazon is neither a lost paradise nor an ethnographic subject. It is a space of cultural encounter, longing, and the ongoing presence of myth in daily life.
Ceccarelli’s paintings offer no final interpretation of the rainforest. They leave room for ambiguity, allowing forms and symbols to remain open. They reward close attention: each work opens a world that can be entered, but never fully possessed.
Born in Iquitos, Peru, in 1960, Gino Ceccarelli has explored the Amazon through his art for over four decades.
With more than sixty solo exhibitions across Europe and the Americas, his work has played a significant role
in shaping the understanding of contemporary art of the Amazon beyond Peru.
Contemporary Art of the Amazon
