Giovanni Sesia
Life, style & influence
Giovanni Sesia was born in Magenta in 1955. He is known for painting on photographs.
The turning point happens in 1998, when he discovers the negatives on the glass of the beginning of the 20th century in an archive abandoned in a mental hospital. They are photographs of the inmates, which he craftily elaborates to express his instinctive solidarity towards them.
Once he identifies the style, his world has undergone a kind of transfiguration. His art highlights a meditation on the images belonging to our common story and on the memory’s capacity to transform them into suggestive instruments.
His still lifes, landscapes, and interiors of abandoned houses can capture suggestive imagery.
What’s more, his paintings on vintage motorcycles are much appreciated.
His works
In 1998 Giovanni Sesia comes into possession of an entire archive of glass negatives of the first half of the 20th century.
He decides to enlarge these photographs and use them as backgrounds for his paintings, grounded mostly on the stories of a shared memory.
His subject matters range from household objects to portraits and landscapes.
He uses earthy colors and from time to time, he adds traces of other colors, mostly red. Finally he inserts a nearly illegible handwriting.
