PAOLA ZANNONI - Italy

CONTACT: galleriazannoni@virgilio.it

Untitled

Middle Ages

palette knife oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

gesso and acrylic on canvas

Gold

The little lady

gypsum and acrylic on board 150 x 100 cm

palette knife oil on canvas 100 x 150

Energy

Untitled

palette knife oil on canvas 80 x 160 cm

palette knife oil on board cm 110 x 220

Her Biography

Paola Zannoni was born in Campiglia Marittima, a small medieval village. And since the age of twenty she has lived in this small but picturesque and evocative environment, studying and developing that form and those colors that would later appear in a surprising and most unusual pictorial expression that has received and continues to receive much acclaim in Tuscany and elsewhere; acclaim accompanied and validated by numerous cups, medals, and various awards.
Paola's painting appears highly expressive in the subjective evaluation of colors and forms. It is precisely the images, spontaneously deformed, that seek to represent the many inner transformations of modern man, sometimes anguished and frustrated by existential problems, sometimes exalted and reassured by idyllic visions.
This painting, very interesting and personal, intrigues and excites, will amaze and shock both the layman and the connoisseur... why?
Because generally it does not arise from the reproduction of real and concrete subjects, but from visions and impressions that only she experiences, perhaps even without her own "self" being aware of it.
What is surprising in Zannoni's paintings is not only the forcefulness of the image, sometimes monstrous and demonic, which is represented and denotes a great strength of character, but also the mastery with which she organizes the combination, the contrast of colors. Sometimes they are numerous and well blended, sometimes there is only one color but the shades created are such that it is a pleasure to look at the transmitted image, to receive the message of joy or sadness, of discouragement or satisfaction that the color sends us like a familiar music. As if the transposition onto canvas of the depth and frankness of human content that only this painter knows how to represent in such an original way were not enough, she also creates beautiful floral motifs on canvas and linen for the making of scarves and foulards, lampshades and curtains, tablecloths and dresses.

The Critique

The Works of Paola Zannoni: between Nourishment and Art. Between Material and Invisible. Art is the food of the soul. It is a fact. Just as the food we eat every day gives us substance and nourishment, so art nourishes our imagination, quenches our creative aridity, makes our imagination move, allowing us to travel while standing still. In short: it moves us when we allow it to come into harmony with us. The sight of a painting and the three-dimensionality of a sculpture communicate with us, triggering an invisible yet perceptible vibratory motion. Through the channel of individual subjectivity, art travels through the senses and creates true synesthesias. To the point of translating these vibrations into emotions that can become suggestions and transform into smell, taste, and touch. Paola Zannoni's art manages to express a very strong conflicting dualism: that between the Material (conventional reality) and the Invisible (reality as each perceives it through their own unique feeling). The material component of her colors, which come out of the canvas and begin to travel, to form tangles, lumps that can be touched, dresses Paola's feelings not only in forms, but in substance. Because it gives nourishment to her dreams and desires, thus erasing all the fears that prevent her from quenching her thirst for serenity. These are feelings that have the urgency to declare themselves to themselves and to the whole world. Immediately. In the hours of the day as well as the night. This is the call of art. Her works are the result of the crystallization of memories and unspoken words. Which remain there immutable after having traveled along the labyrinths of the soul. Anomalous labyrinths where man is already at the center. And seeks the way out to the outside. Towards a light that is not always easy to reach. A goal often pursued by stumbling, hurting oneself and then getting up again aware of having to stop to rest. And then start again to chase that light that now leads us to create the surrounding reality and to give it a name. Which is not the name of others and does not have the taste of others. It is the name we give it and has the taste we want. And for this reason, it has the name of the world. Of our World. Of which we are all citizens, unfortunately not always free and not always equal. Citizens who are not necessarily fond of the same food. But citizens capable of marveling at everyday things as if it were the first time. Of biting into an apple and tasting not only the fruit, but the history of man. A bit like looking inside oneself to seek a light, a glimmer, an anchor, an Ariadne's thread to find the way and never lose it again.
Dr. Alberto Benedetti

Perhaps starting from the vision of a composite and luxuriant nature, from the essence of spontaneous lushness, uncontaminated by the hand of man, from which the constructions of thought have moved, in a positive and negative sense; the painter projects her messages of spiritual and social polemic onto the canvases, seeking a harmony – partly achieved – between poetic needs and the manifest compromises for survival, which appear particularly obscure because they are darkened by the ever-persistent specter of war, which today has taken on the prophetic features of the “Solvet saeclum in favilla.”
In Paola Zannoni's paintings, the questions of the subconscious take shape, pouring into the conscious for explanatory necessity, and her creations are like a reason for moral justification, for the acceptance of time, immersed in the embattled dimension of the struggle for survival.
In the description of reality – while remaining above it – the Artist seems to want to tell us: “I dreamed of a better world and, not finding it, I return to the evocative reasons of the primary dream, not out of fear but to be able to contemplate – within the limits of the possible – the fundamental truths, pillars of support for the spirit.”
This is the spiritual “Iter” of most artists, adult children in the best sense of the word, dreamers fully aware of the origin of the dream.
Careful painting and, I would dare say, with “romantic” accents in the sentimental value of the word, in the supposition of a “secular mysticism” that almost always proceeds parallel to the poetics of love granted to us.
Well-mastered figurations, even in the declamatory of fantasy, control of the brushstroke that comes from other observed disciplines, from technical studies, which serve excellently – in any case – as reins to direct the fiery steed of pure feeling.
Giorgio Tuti
“Il Machiavello” Art Gallery, Florence

On the painting, the spatula and the brush, moved by the magnificent movement released by the artist's subconscious, create shapes and colors pleasant to behold. The attentive observer tries to glimpse an answer to the intricate skein of lines and colors harmoniously intersected.
Mario Baldassarri, Il Telegrafo, Livorno

The world of artistic projection of our Painter often appears to us as immersed in an underwater, silent atmosphere, where sounds do not reach, because it is the brushstroke that narrates – in an apparently informal, abstract synthesis – the story of an experience, of thoughts seeking a harmonious solution to the succession of images, of joyful and suffered teachings.
This atmosphere of sweet detachment from the disturbances and mutability of feelings, however, is transcribed – in an immediate reconsideration – onto the habits of a hypothetical mountain, where every experience is set aside in the recording of the essential traits, beyond that passion of human things that often drags into the vortices of the irrational.
Escape, then, in the careful and musically rich painting of the Artist, and tendency to descriptive detachment: passion, however, reappears here and there in Paola Zannoni's floral compositions, and on this occasion, the words of a French writer, who became famous especially for his “Maximes,” come to mind:
“Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infallibles; et l’homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n’en a point.”
Fire under the ashes, in essence, in the balanced and considered surrealism of the Painter, a touch completely in tune with the intended ideal purposes: unnecessary embellishments and empty of meaning are not noticed, and the continuity of inspiration is appreciated, without ideological falsehoods that – often – make one doubt the artist's vocation.
The decorative tone of the paintings is also very appreciable: beyond any ambitious polemic, there is the spontaneity of projection, with the means chosen after a not insignificant representative journey.
Pierre La Roche

The judgment on the Artist's work can only be positive and confirms the correctness of the choice. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions held in our Municipality and neighboring centers as well as other important national events. She is present in the social life of the Municipality by joining initiatives promoted by the Municipality itself and by cultural Associations; she is a person esteemed and respected by our entire Community.
(Judgment expressed by the Mayor of Campiglia Marittima Lorenzo Banti on the occasion of the awarding to Paola Zannoni, by the Academy of Masters, of the Grand Trophy “A Life for Art” 1988, with appointment as a Member of the Academy as Academic Master. The awarding of the recognition, at the Rossini Hall of the Excelsior Gallia in Milan, takes place on the proposal of the Academy's Management which, in fact, requires as a “conditio sine qua non” the opinion of the Mayor of the City of residence of the Artist.)

From the ARTE RIMECO catalog, Switzerland:

ZANNONI Paola, was born in Campiglia Marittima in 1954 and resides in Venturina (Livorno). She attended a technical course of study until the age of 18, obtaining a diploma in stenotyping. She was already prepared to enter the world of work when she realized that the activity congenial to her was art and she immersed herself in it with all her passion.
Always present in the art world, she reaps excellent recognition.
Critical judgments: …Paola Zannoni grafts her painting into pure abstractionism at times, at other times she pours the play of forms into a screaming passion of the absent subject, agitating with dark and ambiguous fetishes. (Carlo Franza); … In Paola Zannoni's paintings, the questions of the subconscious take shape, pouring into the conscious for explanatory necessity and her creations are like a reason for moral justification for the acceptance of time, immersed in the embattled dimension of the struggle for survival. (Giorgio Tuti); … The world of artistic projection of our Painter often appears to us as immersed in an underwater, silent atmosphere, where sounds do not reach, because it is the brushstroke that narrates – in an apparently informal, abstract synthesis – the story of an experience, of thoughts seeking a harmonious solution to the succession of images, of joyful and suffered teachings. (Pierre La Roche).

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