Paolo Avanzi was born in Rosolina (Rovigo) in 1958. Graduated in Psychology. He has worked for over 30 years in multinational companies as a specialist and project manager. He arrives at the figurative arts in 2002. In 2004 he makes his first solo show at the Sandretto Museum in Pont Canavese. Since 2006 he has been moving towards an experimental figurative that is affected by these informal experiences. Since 2007 he has participated in both national (Padua, Genoa, Bergamo. Brescia etc.) and international (Miami, New York and Seoul) art fairs. Among the countless personal exhibitions we mention those at the Galleria Arte Capital in Brescia, the U. Mastroianni Museum in Marino, the Municipal Art Gallery of S. Michele Salentino, the Emmediarte Gallery in Milan, the Galleria Centro Arte Moderna in Pisa, the Pertini Library in Cinisello Balsamo. His style is characterized by a process of fragmentation and deformation of the figure that is perceived as through a deforming mirror. He has created over 700 works which are published on the website www.paoloavanzi.com Paolo Avanzi periodically organizes personal and group exhibitions in his Spazio Intelvi 11 atelier in Dizzasco (800 meters from Argegno on Lake Como). He is also the author of short stories, poems, essays and theatrical texts. He is also active as an actor and storytelling expert (See website www.avanzidicultura.com)

It is difficult to escape the charm of Paolo Avanzi, an artist who, for some years, appears with intelligent moderation, so as to determine admiration and expectation, that is the dispositions that best suit the work of an artist. Paolo Avanzi, with patient commitment, has endowed himself with a seductive invention and a skilful craft. It is difficult to escape the charm of his deliberately deformed and infinite paintings, because he insists on various clichés of our psychology and our culture: the result maintains a deeply original character. The strength of Avanzi is precisely that of being able to preserve the amazement in everyday life, the capacity for wonder according to the dictates of Baroque aesthetics. We are amazed by Paolo Avanzi's results. What is important to this extraordinary, multiplied and unexpected Venetian artist is to evoke, allude to an entire world with clear fragments of vision, to stir up layers of thoughts and emotions buried, or perhaps never belonged to us, but which he makes us believe ours. This is the power of seduction, of enchanting images: which take root inside us as if they had always been there. His are architectures of thought useful for defining a mental space, as pure compositional elements. Not symbols and not history; after all there is not even a myth in Avanzi, other than the myth of painting itself. From the analytical and objective exploration of our daily social horizon, which seems to be the greatest interest in the art closest to us by Paolo Avanzi, the new story is the most typical tool, both through the montage borrowed from comic strips, and through more properly the pictorial association of fragmentary but significant images from the optics of the mass media, either by accepting, indirectly, the casual composition of images of the affiche déchirée, or in the confluence of different analogical elements that are not directly descriptive. His communication painting, so exact in the writing, so precise in the choice of words, as to be historically close to the present, is clear and evident testimony of a desire for absolute, philosophical freedom, artistic self-determination, the faculty to initiate a event. Avanzi loves art so much that he keeps a safe distance from any other intention, any other commitment, any other ideology. It captures the richness of the visible, that is, of the infinity of phenomena, and captures the richness of the mystery that animates them. In fact, his is an art of pure effort and pure joy: it is evident that he does not believe in extremisms of the human form that in the end leave a single victim on the ground, precisely that principle of reality that substantiates his poetic creed; it is clear that as a young and affectionate lion he fights with the visible, internalizing ancient psychological perplexities in the vision. The quality of his works is very high, because he, in a completely autonomous way and without giving in to the sybaritic lenticularity of the form, understands that reality, as it appears, can be a gigantic nonsense that does not lead to truth. For this reason, by opting for a fascinating and very ambitious language and seconding the magical mirror present to his conscience (all aimed at a superior representation of reality), Paolo Avanzi decided, with nomadic otherness, to push himself further and further away, beyond the border from which there is no traveler who returns.

Andrea Di Pre. Art critic. (January 2009