Annamaria Zanella & Renzo Pasquale: Hand-Made

Artist list

Annamaria Zanella, Renzo Pasquale

Annamaria Zanella
Annamaria Zanella was born in Padua in 1966. A pupil under Pavan, Babetto, Pasquale and Visintin, she took a diploma at the Istituto Statale d’Arte “Pietro Selvatico” of Padua in 1985. She then trained further at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, receiving a diploma in sculpture in 1992. From 1987 to 2000 she taught at the “Selvatico”school. Her works have been displayed in many personal and collective exhibitions (Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Holland, Great Britain, Spain, United States, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Korea, Australia).
She has been awarded many prizes, including – twice, in 1997 and 2006 - the Herbert Hofmann Prize (Munich). Her works are on show in the most important Italian, European and extra-European museums. She is invited to display her works in the most prestigious museums and art galleries worldwide.
The structural emphasis which has always characterised her work is also visible in its compositional freedom, which apparently moves away from the rigour of geometric abstraction typical of the Padua School. Her deconstructed works are therefore always based on rules which seem to be inverted, worn by contradictions, discordant elements, unpredictable opposites. “Poor” materials, pigments mixed with lacquers, patinas, niello, oxides and powders corrode surfaces and change the ideal project which, however, can always be recognised.
The dynamic colours of surfaces are not so much informal as imbued with the movements of Action Painting. Zanella’s abundant use of materials unusual in jewellery, such as paper, cardboard, rags and iron, may seem to recall neo-Dadaism, but her work is far from being absurd or onirical; it is always concentrated between compressed emotions and openly expressed rationalism.
Creativity, strength, sensitivity and courageous inventiveness make this artist unique in her formal solutions and in her assiduous and constant experimentation with materials.


Renzo Pasquale
Renzo Pasquale, born in Padua in 1947, studies biology at the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Padua from 1967 to 1974. A casual encounter with a master gemmologist and precious stone cutter sets him off on his personal journey of exploration in the art of working stones and metals.
The geometrical shapes, transparencies, the superb ability in working precious stones like rock crystal, granites, jasper, etc. impressed Prof. Mario Pinton who, as head of the “Pietro Selvatico” Institute of Art, charges Renzo Pasquale with setting up an artistic laboratory of hardstone and semi-precious stones and also to teach this art to the students of the Institute.
Teaching brought Renzo to confront himself with other goldsmith artists of the “Pietro Selvatico” Institute of Art: Francesco Pavan, Giampaolo Babetto, Diego Piazza... It is with them that he starts to exhibit his works in various exhibitions form the eighties onwards. His work reveals the transparencies of the material.
The infinite variations of light that filters through these sculptures made of rock crystal or black, opaque granite.
Sculptures that can be worn without conveying the impression of a redundancy of lines and volumes.
Essentiality of design, concrete perceptions of thought of Euclidean beauty.
Pondered geometries, meditation on the study of shape, equations of pure mathematics: all seem to dissolve in the emotional impact transmitted by these creations of his, that talk not so much of stone but speak a language of pure poetry and perfect equilibriums.
The displacement of solids, sections, torsions, slippage, cutting, breaking through of solids such as cubes, cones, pyramids, cylinders created in different-coloured stones, always matched with small portions of gold. In this case gold emphasizes a drawing, enhances a section, receives the perspective breaking-down of a stone wall.
Plastic transitions of the inorganic, apparently indomitable material (stone) that softens as it is transformed in the hands of the artist. The transition and change in the Paduan artist’s most recent works are evident.
From the consolidated enquiry regarding shape in space of the previous years now reveals a series of pins where “going beyond” is transformed into the play of opaque transparencies, in secret rooms, of misty glass where a window seems to be made of, and created by, light.
A portrait of time, a photographic shot engraved in quartz to look for new emotions that tell of personal abstract perceptions.
A set of landscapes of the life and soul that this artist transforms with the hard stone into delicate water colours that partly evoke the contrasting shades and ‘chiaroscuro ‘of the great Dutch painters of the seventeenth century.