“The image enters and takes the face of all the accentuated feelings that always agitateus [...]. The task is now to find a form equal to this image, a form, a colour, amaterial.” (CARANDENTE, 1969, p. 14) Leoncillo’s presentation of new works atthe Galleria La Tartaruga in 1957 marked his abandonment of the post-Cubist sculpturefor which he was known and definitive adoption of an Art Informel approach.Thus began a period of intense experimentation with matter during which Leoncillooften addressed subjects of the past rethought in an aniconic sense, as in AncientLovers, an intimate reinterpretation of the Sarcophagus of Spouses (Rome, VillaGiulia, Museo Nazionale Etrusco). The artist moulds, cuts and excavates thestoneware in a visceral archaeology of the image that reveals the original essence ofthe material and his passion for the same. The ancient lovers are the Etruscan coupleeternally united in millennial terracotta. Ancient and yet always new lovers areLeoncillo and the material with which he works. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)