Maria Giovanna Zanella

In Maria Giovanna Zanella’s works, the paint travels across the surface like soft, throbbing skin. The world that comes to life involves feelings and people to whom mainstream imagery pays no attention: corpulent, tender and hairy men, real lovers, sensitive and passionate, who declare their need to exist through the most intense and direct closeness.

The scratching brushstroke and the softness of the forms break through the barrier of conventions, which all too often turn today’s attention to inclusivity into a tool for arriving at a new system of rules. The pairing of the seemingly dichotomous spheres of animality and love is juxtaposed with the simplicity of touching, revealing the search for an “existential nakedness” in which the nuances of the human emerge in all their titanic fragility and beauty.