Blood Passion

On Monday, September 11, 2023 at 7 p.m., Cinzia Cotellessa’s solo exhibition “Passione Sanguigna” will be inaugurated at Studio CiCo Gallery in Via Gallese 8, Rome. It is divided into four themes: “Angels,” “Pets,” “Warriors of Light” and “Anthropomorphic Chair” in an exhibition of about seventy works.

The common thread that unites these four sessions is the artist’s passion for the technique of sanguine pencil, hence the title “Passione Sanguigna” with the desire to foreground what is often not considered of value in an artistic creation, the putti, animals and the very faces of past artists.

A varied exhibition where the table paintings executed in 2004 dominate, where the visitor’s gaze is lost in the shades of sanguine pencil and glides over the drapes of the works in oil. September 11 – the date chosen for Cinzia Cotellessa’s Solo Exhibition “Passione Sanguigna” (to remember and not to forget) – is not accidental: she wants to take us back to a time when the whole world shook and it seemed that everything had to end in a moment. So an exhibition to bring out what is hidden, in the shadows, and which serves to remember and not forget and more: to be reborn.

The exhibition is open and free of charge and will run until October 1.

The works on display: The “Angels”: except in very rare works from past eras the angel in artistic iconography has always been considered almost an element of decoration, they have always been placed around sacred images and hardly considered as the main subject.
The “Pets”: they too have always had a second-order space, accompanying figures of the nobles or depicted in hunting scenes but never protagonists. The “Warriors of Light”: “We all have in our memory works by past or contemporary artists, which we have been lucky enough to see in a museum or perhaps just in a book. But would we be able to recognize the artist from one of his faces? – wonders the artist. “It is from this consideration that the idea of portraying 33 artists, who are like my best friends, was born,” Cotellessa explains. By making this collection of portraits, he has given a face to artists whose physiognomy we may not know, but without whom we would not have all the artistic production that surrounds us. The “Anthropomorphic Chair”: the complete work consists of 36 panels and reaches a size of 6 meters long and 2.10 meters high. The artist finished it in 2020, after 12 years of work. On display in this exhibition are works with the same theme both in sanguine and done in oil but smaller in size. The connection with the other 3 themes listed besides the “sanguine” technique is also the telling of a story hidden behind a drape. A mysterious story, all to be discovered.