Luigi Pepe Diaz (Naples, September 25, 1909 - Milan, February 12, 1970) was an Italian painter and sculptor. In the early
1950s he began to publish "Science and Sexuality", but every time a new number came out, they confiscated it immediately until he decided to stop.
Son of Augusto and Flora Diaz (of Spanish origins and cousin of Armando Diaz). He leaves his classical studies unfinished to attend Gemito's studio. As early as 1927 he made his debut by exhibiting at the international exposition of Conegliano Veneto. He comes into contact with other artists politically committed to communism. He adheres to Circumvisionism, a movement with which he shares the desire for experimentation, rebellion against official art and to turn to European art. He quickly achieves a certain visibility, exhibiting with the group on various occasions. In 1929, with Marinetti, he exhibited in the Futurist Room of the III Maritime Art Exhibition in Rome where he presented a large triptych entitled "Pieces of battleship" and was awarded a medal by the Ministry of War. Always with the Neapolitan avant-garde movement, he was invited in 1930 to the XVII Venice Biennale and in 1931 to the 1st National Art Quadrennial in Rome. In 1932 he exhibited in Paris and London. In painting he approaches neo-cubism and solutions that recall Braque and Matisse. His political commitment involves a series of detentions and arrests as a subversive and communist. In 1935 he expatriated to Switzerland and then to France, to Annemasse and then to Paris where he frequented Lionello Venturi and Giorgio Amendola . He exhibits in personal exhibitions, especially paintings, and also in group exhibitions of Italian art. He continues to maintain contact with Marinetti. In 1940 , during the occupation of Paris, Nazi troops destroyed his studio; he manages to escape, returns to Italy, is arrested at the border and sent to Naples to the Poggioreale prison. Released from prison he works as an illustrator. When the regime fell, in 1944 he published the novel And then? with the publisher Morano. A member of the Communist Party (which he abandoned in 1956 following the events in Hungary ), he moved to Milan in 1946 where he devoted himself to publishing and graphics. In 1952 he opened the Pepe Diaz publishing house and published for the first time in Italy Freud 's last book, Moses and monotheism, with a translation by Arrigo Ballardini and an introduction by Cesare Musatti. He returned to exhibit in 1967, invited to the great exhibition dedicated to Modern Art in Italy 1915-1935, held in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi. His latest works, now oriented towards abstractionism, are presented at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan (1967), at the Civic Museum of Bormio (1967), at the Il Bilico gallery in Rome (1968) and at the Galerie Jeanne Wiebenga in Lausanne (1969). At the end of the 1960s he resumed painting steadily and, in accordance with his own social ideas, tried to get his art out of the official circuits by planning exhibitions inside the factories. He died in Milan in 1970, hit by a car.
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