Italian artist Domenico Gnoli was a prodigious rockstar, loved by the press for his charismatic, playboy persona and unfairly good looks. He was born into an aristocratic family in Rome where he was trained from a young age to identify and replicate various styles of art. In his own words, ‘I was born knowing that I would be a painter, because my father, an art critic, always presented painting to me as the only acceptable thing.’

Hair was a recurring subject of his work, a large number of which depicted the back of his wife, a sculptor, Yannick Vu’s head. He let this obsession fully consume him in his studio on the island of Mallorca in 1967, furiously working at these intricate strands. Hair partings, ends, curled, braided or loose- they were all of equal intrigue, memorialised in acrylic, sand and glue before his untimely passing at the age of 36 from cancer. We take a look at his love letters to hair through his unrivalled lens.