"Who are you, Harlequin?" Print

Expressionist and abstract painter. In stylistic eclecticism, he explores existential and social themes through the unconscious. He is inspired by Abstract Expressionism and also by Transvanguardia, italian art movement, (created by Achille Bonito Oliva the leading art critic in Italy) characterized by the expression of the artist's ego in the work, the strategy of citation,the manual skills, the value of color, the intertwining of figurative and abstract, the desire to grasp and rework interesting elements from every artistic culture. Biography Following the artistic activity of the father Alberto Azzena, figurative painter active from the 60s until the end of the twentieth century, Mario Azzena grew at his school, as apprentices in the ancient art workshops, learning day by day painting techniques, and browsing daily through the extensive library artistic that the father was forming over the years, and yet the many catalogs of contemporary painters more or less well-known of which came to know or of whom visited the exhibitions. This fatherly teaching, albeit conducted in a familiar contest, has been ongoing over the years, made especially for frequent and long talks on the issues of contemporary painting, but also of practical guidance and correction of the first pictorial evidence; actually several designs of Mario have been preserved with great care since the age of 3, made in colored pencils independently; in that works the father recognized a predisposition judgment in the composition and use of color. Unfortunately health problems constitute a serious difficulty for him to develop and plan his life; after surgery of the heart at eight years old for the correction of a congenital heart defect, then at 20 years old it arrives at a diagnosis of adrenal insufficiency that will further limit the forces and possibilities for action. The studies addressed in the scientific sense, make him move away from the practice of painting, which is reduced to a private research, without orientation to a real productive career, as could and should have be. Since the early 80s other way of expression is taken: the poetry. Written with passion and with the use of the metric more rigorous, both in the form of free verse. The poetic vein is expressed stably in a connotation elegiac, lyrical, sometimes with darker accents that recall the personal unhappiness.