PAOLA ZANNONI CRITICS

" Samarcanda " cm. 70x80

Perhaps - if one departs from the vision of a composite and luxuriant nature, from that spontaneous luxuriance essence uncontaminated from men and from which the constructions of the thought moved both in positive and negative sense - he may realise the painter projecting on canvas her messages of spiritual and social polemics, seeking a harmony - partly reached - between poetic demands and evident survival compromises that appear particularly dark due to the ever present ghost of war, today visible in the prophetic semblances of the "Solvet saeclum in favilla".
In the paintings of Paola Zannoni the questions of subconscious take form to be poured backin the very concious for their explanatory necessity, so that her creations are a sort of reason for ethic justification, for acceptance of the time absorbed in the dimension of the struggle for survival.
Describing the reality the artist - even if she remains above it - seems to be willing to tell us: "I have dreamt of a better world and, not finding it in reality, I am returning to the motives who aroused the primary dream not for fear but just to be able to contemplate - as far as possible - the fundamental truths, columns of support of the spirit."
This is the spiritual "Iter" of a large part of artists, adult little boys in the best meaning of this expression, dreamers completely aware of the origin of the dream's origin.
Accurate painting, and I would dare to say, with romantic accents in the
sentimental value of the word, in the supposition of a secular " mysticism " that - almost always - parallelly proceeds with the love poetry we are entitled to.
Figurations well dominated, even in the declamatory of imagination, control of the brush that originates from other observed disciplines, from technical studies that dearly serve - in every case - as reins to lead the fiery steed of pure feeling.

Giorgio Tuti
Galleria d'Arte "Il Machiavello", Florence

"On the picture the spatula and the brush - moved by the magnificent movement emitted by the artist's subconscious - create pleasant forms and colours to look at. The careful observer tries and glimpse an answer to the tangled skein of lines and colours harmoniously intersected"

Mario Baldassarri, Il Telegrafo, Leghorn

Our Painter's world of artistic projection appears often as absorbed in a
submarine, silent atmosphere, where sounds don't come since it is the line of the brush that narrates - in an apparently abstract, informal synthesis - the history of an experience, of thoughts that look for a harmonic solution of the alternation of images, of cheerful and suffered teachings .
This atmosphere of sweet separation from the disturbances and from the mutability of feelings is however transcribed - in an immediate change of mind - over the habits of a hypothetical mountain where any experience is set aside in a recording of essential lines, beyond that passion of the human things that not rarely drags in the vortexes of the irrational.
Evasion, therefore, in the artist's accurate and rich of musical contrappunto painting. Tendency to the descriptive separation: passion reappears, however, here and there in Paola Zannoni's floral compositions and, with the occasion, we recall the words of a French writer, been famous particularly for its " Maximes ":

"Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infallibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point."

Fire under ashes, in substance, in the balanced and serious surrealism of the Painter, her touch completely in tune with her ideal finalities: useless and empty embellishments of meaning are not noticed, and the continuity of the inspiration is there to beappreciated , without those false ideologies that - often - make us doubt about some artist's vocation.
The decorative tone of the paintings is also very appreciable: beyond any
ambitious polemic the spontaneity of projection subsists with the selected
means after a not indifferently representative artistic path.

Pierre La Roche

Our opinion on the artist's work may only be positive and it confirms the justness of the choice. She participated to collective and personal shows held in our town and in the neighboring centers, as well as in other important National events. She is very active in the social life of our town taking part to initiatives organized by our Town Council and by cultural Associations; she is a well esteemed person highly respected by our entire Community.

(Opinion expressed by the Mayor of Campiglia Marittima Mr Lorenzo Banti on the occasion of the assignment to Paola Zannoni - by the Academy of Masters - of the Grand Trophy "A Life for Art" 1988, with nomination to Member of the Academy under the title of Academic Master. The assignment of the award, at the Excelsior Gallia's Rossini Hall in Milan, is executed under suggestion of the Direction of the Academy that, note, requires "conditio sine qua non" the favourable opinion of the Mayor of the artist's City of residence.)

from Art RIMECO Catalogue, Switzerland:

ZANNONI Paola, was born in Campiglia Marittima in 1954 and lives in Venturina (Livorno). She attended a course of technical studies up to18 year-old, achieving the diploma of shorthand typist. She was already prepared to enter the world of labour when she realized that the activity she was longing for was Art: and she then immersed herself on Art with all her passion. Always present in the world of art, she collects excellent rewards.

Some critics: ...Paola Zannoni inserts at times her painting in pure abstractism, some other times she pours her playing with forms in a screaming passion of the absent subject, shaking itself within dark and ambiguous fetishes. (Carlo Franza)...In the paintings of Paola Zannoni the questions of subconscious take form to be poured backin the very concious for their explanatory necessity, so that her creations are a sort of reason for ethic justification, for acceptance of the time absorbed in the dimension of the struggle for survival. (Giorgio Tuti) ...Our Painter's world of artistic projection appears often as absorbed in a submarine, silent atmosphere, where sounds don't come since it is the line of the brush that narrates - in an apparently abstract, informal synthesis - the history of an experience, of thoughts that look for a harmonic solution of the alternation of images, of cheerful and suffered teachings . (Pierre La Roche).