POPPIES - FRANCO AZZINARI

Franco Azzinari was born in San Demetrio Corone, in the province of Cosenza, on March 3, 1949. After the death of his parents, he left Calabria at the age of fourteen. Thus began a truly formative journey that would take him far and wide across Europe. He lived in Paris for several years, where he was captivated by the great Impressionist painters, particularly Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Monet. These three prestigious artists would have a fundamental influence on his artistic future. In France, to earn a living, Azzinari began painting portraits of tourists on the street. In 1973, he settled in Lerici (SP), where he created ten panels on Liguria. In 1974, again in Lerici, at the La Cattedrale gallery, he held his first solo exhibition, which officially launched his artistic career. That same year, Azzinari opened a studio-gallery in Milan. In 1977, he embarked on a series of journeys to the Far East, pursuing traces of ancient Asian civilizations. The following years were marked by significant experiences in the United States, the Seychelles, and Brazil. Over the years, he has received significant and prestigious awards. His works are now part of important Italian and international collections. In 1992, during a trip to Cuba, he rediscovered the colors of his homeland in the local people and countryside. For Azzinari, it was love at first sight, a succession of extraordinary encounters. He portrayed Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway's sailor, President Fidel Castro posing for the artist, the musician Compay Segundo, still lifes, and the sun-drenched Cuban countryside. Thus, in 2001, the Franco Azzinari – Cuba project was born, which included an exhibition held first at the National Museum of Havana and subsequently in various Italian cities, and the publication of a catalog of the same name by Electa of Milan. That same year, Azzinari, interested in Greek mythology, traveled to the places where the ancient gods once lived. He painted The Cradle of Apollo (Island of Delos), Isthmus of Corinth (Peloponnese), The Bay of Poseidon (Cape Sounion), and The Bay of Ulysses (Ithaca). Meanwhile, the Municipal Administration of Altomonte (CS) donated the spaces of the Pallotta Tower to the Maestro, a Norman monument dating back to 1052. In this ancient structure, the “Museo Franco Azzinari” was inaugurated on June 2, 2002, housing the collection Twenty Years with Nature , forty of the artist's most significant works. Inside the “Museo Franco Azzinari” are four rooms dedicated to Cuban works. In recent years, Azzinari, fascinated by the life of Ernest Hemingway, has retraced the writer's footsteps by painting the places and characters he loved in Cuba, Kenya, and Tanzania. In December 2008, the University of Calabria organized an exhibition in the Aula Magna and published the catalog entitled Azzinari. Looking for Hemingway . In 2010, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the famous American writer, Cuban Ministry of Culture Abel Prieto organized the painting exhibition Looking for Hemingway at the tower of the Hemingway Museum in Finca Vigía, Havana. In December of the same year, during a meeting with his writer friend, the idea for the exhibition Expressions of García Márquez was born. Twenty portraits dedicated to the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude were exhibited in Havana, at the Latin American Film Foundation, from December 8, 2011, to January 10, 2012. In July 2012, at the Casa del Alba Cultural in Havana, Franco Azzinari and Alex Castro organized the exhibition El Rostro de la Historia , a tribute the two artists dedicated to Fidel Castro on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday. In October of the same year, Azzinari exhibited his collection Venti del Mediterraneo , organized in Rome, at the Complesso Monumentale dei Dioscuri al Quirinale. In the following year the artist worked on Looking for Hemingway , an exhibition that was set up at the Scollay Square Gallery and the Mayor's Gallery of Boston City Hall from May 20 to June 28, 2013. The exhibition was included in the program “2013 - Year of Italian Culture in the United States”, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Embassy in Washington DC. In August 2015, Franco Azzinari met Francis Ford Coppola at his resort Palazzo Margherita in Bernalda (MT). This was how the project The Emotional World of Francis Ford Coppola was born: 20 oil portraits, 100x70 cm format. The first exhibition was held at the Convent of San Francesco in Giffoni Valle Piana (SA), on the occasion of the 2016 Giffoni Film Festival. In August 2016, the same exhibition was held in Venice, at Palazzo Flangini. In December 2017, at La Cittadella (CZ), the Calabria Region, chaired by the Honorable Mario Oliverio, promoted the anthological retrospective entitled Franco Azzinari: The Mediterranean myth of the wind .

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