Alessandro Papetti Selected Works
Cover image: Alessandro Papetti, Porto Industriale, 2011. Oil on canvas, 125 x 200 cm. All images courtesy of Winsor Gallery and Alessandro Papetti. Sources: James Lord, Alessandro Papetti (exhibition catalogue). Galerie Alain Blondel, Paris, 1997. Claudia Cusano, Alessandro Papetti: The Artist’s Artist (interview). Nuvo Magazine, 2010.
Alessandro Papetti Selected Works
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Alessandro Papetti Selected Works Winsor Gallery June 14 - July 19, 2014
winsor gallery 258 East 1st Ave Vancouver, B.C. V5T 1A6
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Born in Milan in 1958, Alessandro Papetti is an icon of contemporary Italian painting. His fifteen-year career has seen him exhibit widely internationally, most notably at the Venice Biennale for both Italy and Cuba in 2011. Papetti’s sweeping, cinematic paintings are the result of a largely self-taught practice, and bear clear indications of his interest in Italian art history. Their subject matter sits between the monumental and the transient, depicting the cornerstones of industry – the port, the railway, the factory, and the city – alongside lunar figurative works that together expound upon the fragility and decadence of humankind.
Alessandro Papetti, Barocco, 2014. Oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm.
“The labour of vision takes precedence over all else. Italianite also is Papetti’s focus on space, leading one to think of the first artist to demonstrate the power of art to create a self-contained and self-sustaining universe: Tintoretto. The frenetic movement, ghostly perspective and supernatural sense of space so characteristic of the Venetian master have clearly left their mark on the young Milanese painter without, however, overpowering his personal and original view. He has, in short, mastered the configuration of his inner world, and achievement which is essential to the ontological transfiguration that endows with talismanic permanence the transitory detritus of our perishable selves and our world.” — james lord
Alessandro Papetti, Bacino di carenaggio (detail) 2013. Oil on linen, 138 x 90 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Interno Industriale, 2002. Oil on linen, 140 x 205 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Passare Veloci - Tokyo, 2011. Oil on linen, 200 x 330 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Interior Scene. Gouache on paper marouflage on linen, 71.1 x 58.4 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Interieur, 1999. Oil on linen, 98 x 66 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Boulevard Notturno, 2012. Oil on linen, 200 x 330 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Paris Notturno, 2006. Oil on linen, 80 x 185 cm.
Alessandro Papetti, Cuba (Bacino di Carenaggio), 2004. Oil on linen, 100 x 100 cm.
““I am the product of my environment. I live in a hectic city where everything moves at a fast pace. In fact, many of [my] paintings are entitled To Pass Quickly, and some The Sky That Falls. It’s the sensation I get when I am moving quickly down the street, and I can only see buildings, and when I look up it seems like the sky is caving in on me.” — alessandro papetti