BIOGRAPHY

Cinzia Cotellessa was born in Pescara on February 13th 1962 but studied and lived in Rome where she graduated at Liceo Artistico S. Orsola and in 1981 she left the Academy of Fashion and Costume as a stylist and costume designer.

From a very young age, she has devoted herself to painting. At the age of 13, she had the opportunity to exhibit her immature works at Liceo Torquato Tasso.

In 1981, during the Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, she exhibited some of her Indian ink drawings. From that moment on, what was only a passion becomes a real path in constant ascent in the world of art. Her style can be defined as “symbolic figurative”. Critics have often written about her: “… with her thin stroke she remembers the Pre-Raphaelites …”.

Her works show warm and enveloping nudes, full of sensuality, but also heavenly and ethereal angels. The artist uses all the techniques but she prefers the most ancient ones, such as the sanguine and the tempera. To this day many tempera frescoes and also splendid sanguine drawings survive (the self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci).

Cinzia Cotellessa has exhibited numerous times abroad as well, and she sends a different message in each solo exhibition: each show is always the result of an in-depth study, real research that ends with an exhibition.

Her paintings are in private collections all over the world: in Canada, USA, Chile, Brazil, Peru, USSR, South Africa, Iraq, Israel, Turkey, England, France, Sweden, Spain, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, Germany and … in the Vatican State. In November 2008, the artist showed 80 works in an exhibition entitled “Angels and not …” in Castel Sant’Angelo under the protective wing of the Superintendent for Historical and Ethno-Anthropological Heritage and for the Museum Complex of Rome, Prof. Claudio Strinati, who presented the artist with much enthusiasm and acclaimed her with a critical text.

However, from this moment on, Cinzia Cotellessa turns her attention towards a completely different kind of painting, closer to post-modern installations, definitely aimed at Cracking Art, and therefore ecology. The seed of this change (which was not sudden as in 2004 she had started with completely different subjects, such as the “100 balls”) was already in her and had a slow and deep incubation, like the formation of the oil god, until the first exhibition of this new genre in 2010. In 2011, this artist still surprised us, returning to the old love never abandoned, the figurative painting, presenting a series of exhibitions dedicated to Pets, to declare her love for animals aloud.

The first event took place in October at Torretta Valadier in Rome where our four-legged friends were the guests of honor, for the first time in Europe. In 2012, it was the turn of an exhibition entitled “Belle Epoque” that showed 50 works depicting winking and buxom women from the early ‘900. And then it is the turn of a new exhibition whose protagonists are the Artists that she calls “her 33 best friends” through whom the artist celebrates the world of art and its Warriors. “Mutations of life with Art and his Warriors” is an anthological exhibition held in October 2014 at the Dioscuri at the Quirinale, where Cinzia Cotellessa celebrated her 20 years of painting with 157 works and 6 themes in 500 square meters of exhibition space.

It was a success with the public and the media, whose opening was attended by President Napolitano and his wife and presented by Dr. Mara Ferloni, Art critic, Dr. Marina Piranomonte, Archaeologist Director Coordinator of MIBACT, Dr. Gemma Gesualdi, President of Brutium and the journalist Dr. Antonello Dose, who wrote the preface of the exhibition catalog.

However, the inspiration of this artist is constantly evolving and her artistic path is declined in a thousand facets linked by a “fil rouge”, not always perceivable if you don’t know the starting point. In October 2015 she made her debut at Galleria dei Soldati in Rome with an exhibition dedicated to the Feng Shui and entitled “SHU is the magic square”, another success with the public and critics where the speakers were Dr. Mara Ferloni, art critic, Leonardo Tizi, Feng Shui master and architect, and the writer and journalist, Dr. Elio Cadelo. After this experience, her passion for the East instilled in the Artist the need and desire to unite two cultures, East and West, creating a collection of eggs inspired by the world of Feng Shui.

The eggs are of various sizes and materials dominated by the ideograms linked to Feng Shui and the Chinese zodiac. “EGGS” were presented at two events in Rome in November 2017 and in March 2018. The aim of this collection was to intrigue people with a very ancient culture through a familiar and perfectly shaped object … and not yet exhibited there are works from the “Ribbons” collection, born from the passion of this Artist for the circular form in movement.