Paolo Drovandi, born the December the 12th 1967 in La Spezia (Italy), where he lives and works. Drovandi is a self-taught painter, whose main work is the “picture” in itself, having perfectly clear that nothing is more appealing to the “senses” than the mystery which the picture in itself can be. Figurative art has everything in it! For Drovandi it is the starting point, the painter himself, whose work has to be the methodical preparation of the canvas. The canvas itself is the actual reasoned statement of the art of painting. Afterwards, somehow, he just lets the “phenomena” flow in its mysterious way, through coincidence and contrasts but above all, through the brush motions, materials and colours. This is the essential relationship between Drovandi and his painting, a two way path, bijective and at the same time hints the two painters who had the most influences on Drovandi’s work. These two painters, perhaps at opposite spectrums, have influenced Drovandi’s look on painting, where he tries to detect and crystallize some of the authenticity of the picture on the canvas. These two masters are Bacon and Balthus; two different approaches leading to the “emotion”, to the “figure”. Both painters had in common a mystical and fatalistic approach to painting, starting from the white of the canvas, improvising with instinct and thoughtfulness. Two different path for a shared arduous goal. This is, perhaps, where Drovandi tries to convey his work; combining opposites, normally perceived as out of sync. From the most classical of themes in the history of arts, that is the portrait (which Bacon reorganized), Drovandi tries to be as faithful as possible to an actual disorganized likeness, bluntly direct and alive. By doing so, he draws his subjects nearer to himself to catch their essence in the figure, tranforming the act of painting in the actual event.
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