About
El Nigro is an Italian tattoo artist and illustrator based in Naples, Italy. He has worked since 1999 as an illustrator, painter and fine artist, exhibiting nationally and internationally in solo and group shows, under a different nickname. Later, in 2011, he approached the tattoo scene becoming, in a quite short time, very recognizable due his high-contrast Black and White work. The melancholic temperament is the fulcrum of his work, that lurks behind an imaginary that draws and blends his various interests such as literature, music, poetry, Victorian aesthetics and folklore, investigating the emotional frailties of our times.
“You like to give captions to your images, what pleasure do you take in creating stories in your images? Maybe it’s because of my background, basically a life dedicated to Contemporary Art. As drawing, it’s a need. I always try to give titles and build up little stories around certain series or characters. I would feel the work incomplete without. Although this need, usually I prefer to give just a hint of the story, leaving the reading key open to the observer. Suggestions, not explainations. If you explain an artwork it dies, it doesn’t have a reason to exist anymore.“
(from an interview by Pascal Bagot - Inkers Magazine)
“Trying to understand who El Nigro is, the artist, looking at his works is like expecting to know a house by spying through the lock, seeing only a glimpse of it; because his drawings, although full of an intense, explicit and at times almost violent symbolism, are at the same time hermetic, described in a time that no longer exists except in the romantic and dark circle of his poetic.“
(Luca Cospito - from The Melancholic Temperament book's preface)
Interviews:
Il Tatuaggio Magazine 15 (Ita) Download https://www.iltatuaggiomag.it/rivista/
Inkers App (Eng) Download https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dimitrihk.atc.bookstore&hl=en_US&gl=US
Tattoo Life Magazine (Ita) https://italia.tattoolife.com/el-nigro-umor-nero-come-linchiostro/
Articles: