About

Biography

How My Passion Began

I have always felt the need to express color, but I thought it was too beautiful for me to dedicate myself to it body and soul as a painter, a gift for a few. Or maybe, simply, I guessed that this need would have hooked me and led me to who knows where and I was afraid.

 

During a two-year stay in Munich, where I went to improve my German after studying languages, I realized I could not put off any longer and I had to dive into that poetic and tumultuous world that was waiting for me. So, back in Italy, I passed the exam to be able to attend the Brera Academy, finally!

More about Me

In the meantime, as a makeup artist, I was lucky enough to work for many years at the Verona Arena, at the Salzburg Festival and in many other theatres and cites in Italy and abroad. In these experiences I filled myself with beauty, music and art. Being able to access magical places full of history such as the Arena with its arches smelling of damp, dusty costumes and humanity or the rooms of the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, which I felt populated with souls from the past, it literally put wings on my feet. Attending the orchestral rehearsals of the greatest conductors such as Gergiev and Maazel, collaborating with directors, choreographers and costume designers of international caliber helped to make me understand the value of work, the commitment necessary to complete a project.

I was the creative director, makeup collection designer and project manager for an Italian brand for 30 years, until the color completely kidnapped me.

Artistic Statement

Painting is for me a mystical experience, the search for contact with those ancestral forces that permeate  the world and that just capturing and being able to represent makes me happy.

Art consists in being able to open my window on this unknown horizon to feel in unison with what I still don’t see, but feel.

Like the pages of a diary, my canvases are overlays of thoughts and adventures that develop in metamorphosis with a life of their own, waiting to be ridden. I start a canvas but I don’t know where I’m going to end up. It is the color that leads me.

I realized that there are no “good brushstrokes and bad brushstrokes”. As in life, there is no sign that can be erased. All the signs are good and arrive on paper because they are driven by a sometimes unconscious need. The important thing is what happens next. The signs must be understood and carried forward with courage.

 

Sometimes I wish I could paint with my eyes closed as if the sight distracted me from that inner urge that from the heart and from the mind goes directly to the hands.

There is no certainty of a good result. I start my work with an intuition, an impulse that I don’t know where it will end. I don’t take anything for granted. Everything changes, always.

Exhibitions

Publications

Solo Exhibitions

Exhibitions & Art Fairs

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Biennale Chianciano" - Chianciano Terme ITALY

Chianciano Biennale is one of the most dynamic celebrations in the world, offering the perfect venue for a wonderful and inspiring experience of international art set in a breathtaking setting.

https://biennalechianciano.org/inaugurazione2022/

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Villa Giulia" - Verbania, ITALY

Wunderkammer: the “Rooms of Wonders” contain in a precious casket, artworks of different styles and techniques.

 

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Museo Diocesano" - Salerno, ITALY

Sublimina: an unpredictable boundary between the image and the imaginary. https://www.gigarte.com/arteborgogallery/news/24398/sublimina.html

 

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Villa Brentano" - Milano, ITALY

Identity: a collective on the relationship between man, his own self-awareness and identity of the world. https://www.independentartists.eu/identity-una-collettiva-artistica-sul-rapporto-tra-uomo-la-sua-stessa-autocoscienza-e-identita-nel-mondo/

 

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "CASA CAVA" - Matera, ITALY

A project of re-birth, of divination, aimed at beauty. In perhaps the darkest days of the new Millennium,art plays a privileged role: once again, it can be a reference for inspire life and its seductions. https://www.casacava.it/event/art-mater-mostra-darte-contempora/

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Villa Brentano" - Milano, ITALY

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Captaloona Gallery" - Madrid, SPAIN

“As long as man exploits man, as long as humanity is divided into masters and servants, there will be neither normality nor peace. The reason for all the evil of our time is here. “https://captaloona.com/eventos/dentro-pasolini/

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "Imago Ars- Venice, ITALY

Can we still see beauty in imperfection?.”http://www.imagoars.com/spazio_affinito.php

 

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "FERRARA ARTEXPO"- Ferrara, ITALY

“An award dedicated to my name, my name for many is a reason for criticism of positions that may seem harsh, for others it is the name of a person who has loved art with infinite tenderness, looking for art even in the most remote “.

Vittorio Sgarbi https://www.premiovittoriosgarbi.it

Manuela Pederzolli exhibiting at "FERRARA ARTEXPO"- Ferrara, ITALY

The Award, reserved for a small number of selected artists, tends to attest their real value, underlining the importance of their stylistic path carried out in recent years. https://culturaidentita.it/premio-vittorio-sgarbi-premio-isabella-deste-grande-successo/

Torna in alto
THROUGH WATER
This is the selected work, “Through Water” by Manuela Pederzolli featured at Villa Brentano international contemporary art exhibition organized by Indipendent Artists.

Through Water suggests an identity reflected through the mirror of water that reaches the surface full of everything that comes from the depth, flower petals, leaves, various types of organisms. A liquid and mutant identity that, getting lost in the waves arranged like floating steps, lets you glimpse the semi-hidden portrait of Santa Muerte, a pre-Columbian divinity. In this elusive and technological reality, where values ​​always take on different meanings, this is perhaps the portrait that makes us all similar, belonging to the same species, a return to origins.

REBIRTH
This is Manuela Pederzolli selected work, featured at Casa Cava contemporary art exhibition

In the cyclical nature of time the wounds of men doze off, the rocks sculpted with violence are smoothed. Everything is reborn under a great bright sky, our hopes for peace and love, fragile like the petals of a flower that becomes transparent under water. Wash our eyes and inebriate us with life!

CITY OF THE FUTURE, THE CONTEMPORARY CITY SEEN FROM ART AND ARTISTS

MIXED MEDIA ON RICE PAPER – CM 88 X 73,5 – 2021

This is the selected  work, “Solo” by Manuela Pederzolli  featured at Villa Brentano international contemporary art exhibition organized by Indipendent Artists.

 

It is a future where nature wins with its beauty, perhaps modified, but finally free from the man who fights it. “In my city of the future – says Manuela – only traces of skyscrapers, factories, highways and all the various human constructions that have eroded the natural territory remain : houses seen from above and conglomerates. Everything, however, is being covered with colorful corals and marine vegetation that is slowly reclaiming its spaces. Yes, because by now the oceans have covered much of the still land. Traces of men spin like in a vortex inside a large fish,  inhabitant of this city.”

INSIDE PASOLINI- The focus exhibition in the month of Pier Paolo Pasolini birth centenary

MIXED MEDIA ON RICE PAPER – CM 88 X 73,5 – 2021

This is Manuela Pederzolli  selected  work, “Dentro Pasolini”   featured at contemporary art exhibition Captaloona Gallery curated

by Gina Affinito.

Beyond the barbed wire and in the solitude, I feel his clear gaze opening on the “B” side of humanity, the cruelty of indifference and hypocrisy.

A gnarled and dry tree like Pasolini’s body throws its shoots beyond a suburban landscape, regardless of winter. The fingers between the pursed lips, the gaze projected on something terrible, perhaps within himself, perhaps outside, beyond the curtain of appearances, he rattles off poems that feed on pages written by violence.

 
Icona di Verificata con community
 
 
 
 
IMPERFECTION IS BEAUTY
This is Manuela Pederzolli selected work, featured at Imago Ars contemporary art exhibition

Two different worlds meet and merge together to bring to light a new vision, the beauty of imperfection. The scratched and  prickly pears cover a partially mutilated Venus de Milo almost devouring its surface. Without arms, today more than ever a symbol of athletic resilience, the new Venus appears current and beautiful so dressed in the cactus pattern that, from its parched and sunlit lands,  becomes an architectural element of a fantastic garden.

Premio Vittorio Sgarbi

This is Manuela Pederzolli selected work, featured at Premio Vittorio Sgarbi international contemporary art exhibition

A journey into the soul, a dream vision of the infinite possibilities of the unconscious.

SHIVA'S DANCE

This is Manuela Pederzolli selected work, featured at Isabella d'Este international contemporary art exhibition

We are all different and yet we belong to the same world…we are made of the same stuff.