This focus is on the worldwide famous Italian artist ANNALÙ.
THE VITAL BREATH OF ART
Thanks to the sensitivity and generosity of the artist, with the precious involvement of PUNTO SULL’ARTE Art Gallery in Varese, Il respiro vitale dell’Arte – The vital breath of Art – was born as a project that sees in ARBOREA a work dedicated to cystic fibrosis and inspired by the theme of breathing that, due to this pathology, is missing for FC patients.
Arborea is, in fact, in the artist’s image, a modern dryad able to give breath, extend life, like the Nymphs that gave strength and vegetative energy to woods. The work had previously been exhibited at ArtVerona in 2018, «but immediately afterwards I decided to take it off the market and keep it for me, precisely because of the symbolic role it plays in my personal life, even more important than the one it represents for my job», underlined the artist. «Since the very beginning I felt such an intimate connection with its genesis and its bright presence that it was impossible for me to separate from it. This will only happen when it embarks on a new life, as an hymn to Research».
The initiative forsees that FFC (Fondazione Ricerca Fibrosi Cistica) receives the proceeds of the sale of Arborea to the highest bidder, starting the auction from the minumum bid of 20.000 €, price that is lower than the actual market estimate.
The proceeds will be entirely given to the Foundation for supporting the research project for FFC.
Auction Regulation
The work was conceived when Annalù discovered that she was a healthy carrier of cystic fibrosis: «Actually, I realized that my art could become an opportunity to donate to Cystic Fibrosis Research and so I contacted FFC, Fondazione per la Ricerca contro la Fibrosi Cistica. In my visionary Arborea is a woodland nymph that has the power to give life just like the vital breath of Art gives breath to those who do not have it».
Cystic fibrosis (FC) is the most common serious genetic disease in Italy (100,000 FC patients worldwide). It affects many organs, especially pancreas and lungs. But it is the damage caused to the lungs that determines the quality and duration of life, which at the end leads the patients to the impossibility of breathing. Only Research can give them new breath.
VAF FOUNDATION
We are pleased to announce that the sculpture “Fukingashi red wind” by Annalù has been recently acquired by the prestigious collection of the VAF Foundation in Germany, after they came to visit our Gallery.
The VAF Foundation is a German cultural enterprise whose goal is to collect, enhance, make accessible, disseminate and make known modern and contemporary Italian art, from the masterpieces of the twentieth century to the most recent creative contributions.
The cultural exchange and artistic dialogue between Italy and Germany – and the German-speaking countries – play an important role in the ambitious activity of the VAF Foundation, which lends works from its rich and valuable art collection to German and Italian museums Italian of the XX and XXI centuries.
With more than 2000 inventoried works, this collection today represents a real compendium of Italian art, which, starting from the works of Divisionism and Futurism, through singular examples, presents an almost complete series of the main names, the most significant currents and of the most important creative trends from 1900 to today.
THE ARTIST
«If someone were to ask me to define the magic of Annalù in a single word, I think I would use “short-circuit”. The mental short-circuit that is immediately triggered when one grasps the oxymoron behind all of her poetry. The sense of that powerful, assertive lightness; the whisper of the matter which, while continuing to be a murmur is, nevertheless, inescapable; the sensation of live, vivid, breathing nature, tinged with the obvious flattery of artifice, the impossible, the creature that can exist, but only in dreams; the sense of something instantaneous, immediate and fleeting, so admirably frozen in an eternal present; the sculpture takes on three dimensions, conquering space while being – deny it if you can – absolutely, incontrovertibly fluid.
One of the keys to this miracle of equilibrium lies in the material she works with. Discovered with joy, mastered with endless patience, on a daring journey of victories and defeats, conquered, loved and hated, revealed in all its possibilities, tamed – perhaps – but never completely, resinglass has given Annalù the tangible and physical sense of a desire that has always lodged inside her head and heart…»
Alessandra Redaelli, curator, 2015
Annalù is one of those artists for whom control over matter, chemistry and physical substances, is a core part of a broader exploration process, which naturally involves art, but also the most impalpable dimensions of the spirit.
In her works there is always a feeling of metamorphosis, of passage: Annalù is able to assemble contradictory elements such as resins and paper, barks and glass wool, bitumen and sand, concrete and roots, to create new realities, suspended worlds where alchemy and lightness are predominant elements.
Annalù is able to hypnotize and catch the thoughts of the observers, building swirls of emotions. She makes so, for example, with her Dreamcatchers, holy dream catchers made of resin butterflies and iridescent colors: poised between sculpture and painting, between nature and chemistry, between reality and dream… between thoughtfulness and lightness.
The artist tries to give dynamism to thoughts: the viewer can seize the moment but imagine the future.
«I don’t have any favorite subjects: I have stories to tell and every time I try to find the most suitable tools to do it. I’m my job. I am transparency and opacity, the apparent structured fragility with strong invisible fiber; I’m disintegration and assembly; I’m the material which dismember and the ink that liquefies.»
RESINGLASS
Originally extracted from trees as resin, nowadays mainly synthetic, resinglass is the primary material in Annalù’s sculptures. Playing with colors and transparencies, the Venetian artist is able to create fascinating contrasts with a unique feminine sensitivity: she creates fragile cobwebs that look like lace textures; she hurls arrows at suspended books, piercing them; she lifts gushes of water, or swirls waterfalls…
The constant challenge for this artist has always been to combine an unemotional material with an expressive language that always wants to convey wonder, vitality and poetry. For making this, she had to learn over time, deep passion, a lot of research and a lot of experimentation, to master the chemical reactions behind this process.
Annalù’s works, even when they appear impetuous and vital, have always had an elegant, refined, poetic and always unique aesthetic. Apparently fragile as glass, but strong and resistant, because this is the nature of resinglass. And also, because this is the nature of Annalù.
«Protecting her face with a carbon-active filter mask, her hands covered with double rubber gloves, Annalù tackles resinglass like a warrior, because that material that looks so enchanting and pretty can be a fierce enemy during the crafting process. She heats it, moulds it, strokes it, shapes it, draws it, drips it, courts it, cajoles it and charms it, allowing herself to be charmed in return. A tiring, exhausting task characterised by trial and error, sometimes frustrating even, but when thoughts become reality, occasionally a reality that is even better than the original thoughts, the sensation is one of those that make your heart race.» – Alessandra Redaelli, curator, 2015
The best way to understand Annalù’s spirit and vision is to listen to her talking about her art and observing her while working in her studio.
We suggest you to watch this video on Annalù’s world, created by Galeries Bartoux, a Gallery that promote her artworks like PUNTO SULL’ARTE.
SITE SPECIFIC
Annalù’s artistic path has always been based on the research and experimentation with new materials and themes. This impulse – to innovate and renovate – has led the Venetian artist to create works of all formats, from 15×15 cm to site specific installations of monumental sizes.
Following here you will find some examples of the versatility and creativity of an artist who has never been afraid to confront either with the artworks’ locations, or with the historical and iconographic models of reference.
With the bronze work of the “Madonna Immacolata Capitana da Mar”, designed for the homonym Church in Jesolo (VE), Annalù had to face, for example, with the holy image placed on the top of the dome of the Basilica della Madonna della Salute in Venice. The result, however, seems extremely new: at the top of the large cusp shaped as the bow of the building, the Virgin advances at an energetic but, at the same time, graceful pace, wrapped in a drapery, far from being baroque, and rippled as if it was made of waves or coral.
In Annalù’s monumental artworks portfolio there aren’t only mystic and holy themes, but she has also been able to give her sense of fragile appearance to geometric shapes and to alive subjects, inspired by nature.
BIOGRAPHY
Annalù was born in San Donà di Piave (VE) in 1976. She graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 1999 and since 2001 her works have been shown in important solo and group exhibitions in Italy, like in 2001 and 2011 at La Biennale di Venezia, and abroad from Hong Kong to Florida or Los Angeles.
Awards and mentions: Arte Laguna Award “Painting and Sculpture section” 2007 (2 Awards) and in 2008 (3 Awards); Pagine Bianche Award in 2006; 1 Stonefly Award for Contemporary Art in 2008; Ora Award in 2011; 1st Prize “Opera le vie dell’Acqua” in 2012; Zaha Hadid Award, Biennale di Salerno in 2016.
Museums: GAM in Bologna; Natural History Museum in Venice; Rocca Paolina in Perugia/Fondazione Burri; Palazzo Ca’ Capello in Venice; Palazzo Ducale in Pavullo (Modena); Fondazione Benetton; Museum of Santa Caterina in Treviso; Archeological Museum in Vasto (Chieti); Church of San Francesco in Como; Church of San Salvador in Venice; Rocca dei Rettori in Benevento; Palazzo dei Papi in Viterbo; SDAI, San Diego;
Annalù was selected for representing Italy in the group exhibition at Moya Museum in Vienna. Her artworks are in public and private collections in Italy and all over the world.
UNESPECTED ANNALÙ
Annalù is a reserved artist, who prefers to to let her artworks speak for her and live her joys as well as her difficulties in a private way. However, we offer you an unexpected Annalù, thanks to an abstract from an Italian interview for ArTemperature:
What is the work you love most and why?
A: There is not a work to which I am particularly attached: each one represents a very precise moment, that it is always temporary and, after having passed, I can let every artwork go without nostalgia. But there is a work that for me represents an important emotional start, it arrived to me as a clear intuition, as if it was an image from the afterlife, and perhaps that is why I feel it in a different way.. It’s Hermes from 2004: the installation of a swing of feathers swinging under a sky that passes from night to day… […] Hermes’ identification with the Egyptian god Thoth makes him one of the symbolic incarnations of alchemical art and for me that mystical, esoteric, metaphysical and philosophical world is the pillar on which all my works are based.
Can you tell us three things you love and three things you hate?
A: I love so much smelling the fur of my dogs; the sea and the divine feeling I feel when I create something new. The latter lasts very little but it is so exciting. I hate fake modesty, arrogance, but more than anything, people who are prevented, who come up with ideas based on nothing.
For learning more about Annalù and her artworks we suggest you to read the catalogue of NEFES – L’ALCHIMIA DI UN SOFFIO, the last solo exhibition of Annalù at PUNTO SULL’ARTE.
You can find it at the following link: Read the catalogue