Della Melancholia
Dopo Freud, 2014, olio su tessuto di lino, cm 35×33
For Elisa Zadi, painting is experience
essential to feel the precise state of mind with which to face that different canvas every day that is called existing. Expression of an acute will for analysis, which knows how to delve into the deepest depths of her psyche, the gesture of painting makes her strong, being like a prayer, a ritual to be performed every day, in silence, to be at peace with the own interiority. Painting is the highest way to question oneself about the world, it means inevitably placing oneself in front of herself, relentlessly, moved by the profound need to look outside to understand oneself inside, to find out what she wants, what she wants, what she thinks, what secret is hidden in that confession. which will soon be painting. Marco Palamidessi
The faces face each other in their solemnity that refers to the fixity of the icon were it not for the strong expressive and introspective connotation that determines an existential sense of the human being and in particular of the female sphere that Zadi wisely manages to make permeate with the his portraits. Those eyes look at us with determination, with involvement, they look at us as if out of a desire to be looked at, seen, in their Truth. In these gazes, Zadi probably gets naked, revealing through these painted eyes her soul, which calls and shows itself to the viewer. With courage they put themselves on the line and reveal to us a partial and fleeting glimpse of the spirit of the artist who, thanks to his work, is sealed in the canvas, in these faces.
What could I start from if myself?
The series of self-portraits on Melancholia was born from the almost daily need to investigate my person. The title is inspired by Durer's work of the same name in which melancholy is seen as a particular emotional state that favors introspective thought, a saturnine creative condition, typical of artistic doing. These self-portraits were all made from life with the help of a mirror. My face reflected in the mirror placed next to the canvas, made it possible for this to become the direct canvas in which I was able to record the forms and impulses of the moment. A way of questioning myself, of looking inside myself, without preconceptions or pre-established ideas, but only with the desire to really discover my body and how this manifests itself through the appearance of my face in its always different impulses.
