Andrea Sampaolo - Self-Portrait

The work draws on an Informal aesthetic language. The devastation wrought by World War II left a profound mark on Western civilization, which in the visual arts also resulted in an inability to communicate. For some artists, this challenge led to a complete rejection of any visual language, resulting in the birth of Informal Art. The various Informal movements are certainly connected to American Abstract Expressionism, especially with regard to the gestural component, but they go further in their rejection of any figurative element, even geometric. Their research focuses instead on the material from which their works are composed.

Among the most important exponents of Informal Art and Abstract Expressionism in Italy and beyond, Andrea Sampaolo develops his own language through an intense perceptive exercise transfigured into gesture. The artist begins by capturing sensory data and reworks it through his highly personal experience. Thus, the representation of his vision definitively loses all contact with phenomenal reality, translating into a pure transposition of matter and gesture. In many of his works, however, Sampaolo, while remaining in the realm of total abstraction, does not completely abandon form, introducing figurative elements. Yet Andrea Sampaolo's figuration has nothing to do with either naturalistic rendering or abstraction: his figures are shaken by the intense vibrations of pictorial gesture and color, which are used brutally, reaffirming his close relationship with American graffiti art. In this way, the artist is able to create a chromatic material that seems alive, dynamic, and ever-evolving in its drama.

Andrea Sampaolo was born in Rome on March 27, 1966. After earning his art teacher's diploma in 1983, Sampaolo began his artistic career as a painter in 1989. His research soon expanded into diverse experiences, including visual installations and performances, and extended into fields such as communication and design. Although he favors painting as a field of experimentation, Sampaolo today presents himself as an eclectic and multifaceted artist, unafraid of the rapid transformations underway in contemporary art. In 2010, he traveled to the United States after his work was selected by Poltrona Frau for its annual exhibition of emerging artists, held at its Miami headquarters. This would be a pivotal moment in Sampaolo's career, as his 32 large canvases documented and honored the close connection between his art and the American avant-garde of the 1950s and New York graffiti art. Hence the decision to move permanently to Miami, where he was signed by the Unix gallery, with which he participated in Art Miami and the Art Southampton fair. On September 21, 2013, a public marble work, "Ghost Dog," was inaugurated in the Cloister of San Francesco in Norcia, Umbria, commissioned by the local government. In 2014, Andrea Sampaolo interpreted marble in a pictorial and contemporary way in the RE-LIFE project. In 2015-16, he exhibited as a special guest at the ArtRooms event in London, and in November 2016, he created the exhibition "Deconstructing the Abstract" at the new Frau Atlantica space, as an extra-salon event of the 2016 Art Miami exhibition, under the patronage of the Italian Consulate.

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