Paola Pezzi

Life, style & influence

Paola Pezzi was born in 1963 in Brescia.
Her artistic vocation is rooted in her family story: her uncle is the painter Gabriele Saleri.
A student at the Brera Academy, she prefers to dig deep into the existential, personal and creative aspects of artworks.
The turning point in her artistic career comes when she decides to break some large polyurethane sculptures into pieces, then rebuilds them bandaged in new agglomerations and finally buries them. When she retrieves these sculptures, she finds that they are soaked in the moods of the earth. They assume an aspect of minerals.
Thus the idea of transformation is an intrinsic characteristic of her art: one thing, in certain conditions, can become another thing and eventually gives life to unexpected evolutions.
Between the years 1998 and 2000, Paola Pezzi seeks for new artistic paths: she gives herself to painting, executing large-scale canvases that represent her actual atelier, packed with artworks she makes every day.
She creates new three-dimensional works by assembling drinking straws and pencils.
The artist wants to accentuate the twisting movement, giving a hint to vortex, that harks back to primordial chaos which is the origin of all.
With this idea in mind, she adopts diverse materials from daily life, such as toothpicks, cotton swabs, charcoals, etc.
As she sustains, her sculptures are not small; they are dense with “fragments of inner life”.
Paola Pezzi further wants to emphasize that art making is an activity that has an origin, a direct connection with the germinative forces of nature.

Her works

Paola Pezzi gains recognition for her sculptural assemblies. She also excels in painting: she works mostly with fabrics, sometimes pre-printed, through which she tells stories of her everyday life.

Want to know more?

Watch Episode 76 dedicated to Paola Pezzi from our Youtube channel “Pralines – Deliciousness from the World of Art” (Italian only)