Antonio Nicola Ciervo’s vivid, rhythmic, and playful painting proposes the possibility of an idealized urban utopia, free of conventional associations of urban blight and chaos. The warm, cheerful, and even surreal palette introduces a harmonious two-dimensional space that conveys the geometric and rational structure of the city and its quarters. Ciervo dubs this work “UrbanArchiPainting” and defines the idea as a reconstruction of a renewed urban landscape with its facades, its roofs, its squares and streets, districts where “colors become heat.”

Born in 1953 in Moiano, Italy, initially trained and employed as an architect, Ciervo appropriates the architect’s idealized vision of the potential for a harmonious urbanity and employs it in a “two-dimensional system where the main part is devolved to structure, connectivity and juxtaposition of shapes and colors.” The third dimension arises from the pleasant sensations and imaginations in playful response to the gaze he proposes—as epicenters of culture, design, and diversity, the cities of Ciervo shine with optimism in the face of chaos.