Maestro Franco Azzinari is known all over the world as the painter of the wind; painter of the warm wind of the South, that wind which shapes the fields of ripe wheat, the areas of red poppies, the brooms in bloom and the centuries-old olive trees typical of the southern landscape.
The definition, coined by the creative genius of Sergio Zavoli, with the passing of time has imposed itself as extraordinarily appropriate to highlight the specificity of the artist. In fact, for a long period of time in Franco’s artistic life the wind was always present, palpable and vigorous. It is enough to stop and look at his first works to feel the sensation of the wind in your face: sometimes associated with its powerful howl, sometimes delicate with its light breeze, sometimes soaked in the smell of pollen that carries and the flavors of good things that caresses.
Then time passed and Franco evolved, both as an artist and as a person, becoming a citizen of the world. That world citizen who stops in the places he visits to breathe the air and to communicate with the people he meets to understand their innermost emotions; emotions that he then transformed into beautiful artistic monographs and among them: the places of the Mediterranean myth, the seafaring people of vibrant Cuba and the colorful Kenyan world.
Franco Azzinari’s artistic monographs are almost always centered on people’s faces, faces that display a deeper emotion, describe their loves, dreams, hopes and also their daily fatigue.
It is extraordinary the ability of the master to transform ordinary people into giants, showing their pride and dignity of being.
Now Franco has evolved again, moving from ordinary people to the expressions of the faces of the greats of recent and contemporary history.
Among the characters painted by the Maestro, a prominent place is held by Ernest Hemingway of whom we remember the beautiful monograph “Looking for Hemingway” (2013). Then we find Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2011) described in the artistic monograph “Expressions of Gabriel Garcia Marquez” and finally the most recent pictorial monograph dedicated to the maximum leader Fidel Castro, called “El Rostro de la Historia,” on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday.
In continuity with the works on the greats of history, today we present a new intimist research conducted by Franco Azzinari centered on the master of cinema Francis Ford Coppola.
During the course of his career, Francis Ford Coppola has made highly successful films such as “The Godfather” in 1972, “Apocalypse Now” in 1979, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in 1992 and the recent “Twixt” in 2011, which have placed him among the greats of the history of American cinema together with Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Coppola’s relationship with Italy, and in particular with Basilicata, is very strong. In fact, in Bernalda, the town of origin of his grandfather Agostino, he bought an ancient palace to transform it into the “Palazzo Margherita”, a very prestigious resort and his favorite Italian residence. It was at Palazzo Margherita that Franco met the master of cinema for the first time, beginning this extraordinary collaboration that resulted in this artistic monograph.
Franco’s works on Coppola contained in this monograph are not simply paintings on canvas, but are animated works capable of expanding and filling all the surrounding space.
The mature features of Coppola’s face, the roughness and colors of his skin, the bone structure of his hands, the liveliness of his eyes, the depth of his gaze, the historical experience of his mighty beard, magically harmonize with the colors used by the master, transforming static images into multidimensional entities that, at first rarefied, then increasingly sharp and defined are transformed, in the observer’s imagination, into almost hologrammatic multidimensional forms.
But the magic does not stop and continues to evolve, so the images already animated grow and develop in an “emotional increased reality” or in the world where the enrichment of sensory perceptions is achieved, not through technology but, through the emotional perceptions of art.
In this new paradigm, Maestro Azzinari associates the emotional traits of Francis Ford Coppola with various backgrounds: fields of wheat cradled by the Lucanian wind; the image of the castle of Bernalda, very dear to the master of cinema; the alleys and houses of Matera, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and European Capital of Culture, and other small urban settlements typical of the Lucanian territory, including the interiors of Coppola’s residence in Bernalda.
It may have been fate, but from the meeting of these two masters of art, a new way of making art between artists was born that I would dare to define as “mutual contamination”. It is the magic where the two artists integrate, complement each other, influence each other, enrich each other’s knowledge, thus providing added value to the sum of their individual values.
I like to define the new Franco Azzinari as the painter of emotions and his paintings as “emotional holograms of augmented reality”. Also because they make us travel in spaces where the deep emotions of the human being live, such as restlessness and the desire to dream.
Renato Guzzardi
