ABOUT

 

Guido Albanese is a contemporary Italian artist born in 1968 in Barletta, Puglia, where he still resides and works.

BIOGRAPHY

Guido Albanese is a contemporary Italian artist, born in 1968 in Barletta, Puglia, where he currently lives and works.

His art is characterized by its versatility and ability to move across different styles and media, including figurative and abstract painting, photography, and digital art. His work can be defined as a profound visual investigation of the relationship between humanity and nature, exploring themes such as landscape and natural elements like clouds and water, treated as archetypal symbols. His images express the tensions and ambiguities related to our pursuit of sustainability, questioning our connection to nature and the progressive loss of authenticity.

Rather than depicting the current environmental crises—such as global warming or biodiversity loss—Albanese chooses to evoke a primordial dimension, a world still untouched by human presence, where nature retains its original purity.

With the series Another World, Albanese begins a cycle of visual explorations into the complex relationship between humanity and the planet. Through a lyrical and melancholic gaze, he presents glaciers, deserts, volcanoes, and cloudscapes that evoke the Earth's beauty, power, and fragility, silently questioning our role within it.

EDUCATION

After studying set design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and Bari, he completed his training in 1994 with a specialization in set and costume design at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan.

His professional career began by collaborating as a concept artist with the set designer Ezio Frigerio in Paris, and later with other set designers in Milan. However, over time, wishing to experiment and broaden his knowledge of other artistic disciplines, he also dedicated himself to the study of computer graphics and the rediscovery of painting. These would indeed assume an increasingly important role, to the point of integrating and predominating in the future development of his artistic journey. In the early 2000s, he more vigorously undertook his aesthetic research, experimenting with traditional artistic techniques combined with computer graphics, with the aim of creating cross-pollinations and new expressive forms of art. He draws inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, Informal Art, and Pop Art. Subsequently, the study of Renaissance painting and Eastern art involved him to such an extent that it led him to return to a more traditional type of painting, enriched however by the experiences of modern painting and deeply influenced by the formal synthesis and gestural quality characteristic of Eastern ink wash painting, particularly Chinese (shuǐmòhuà) and Japanese (sumi-e).

In parallel, photography and digital art began to emerge as autonomous paths in his research, intertwining with painting in a silent but coherent dialogue aimed at exploring the profound connection between human beings and nature. Each medium becomes a different way of listening to and exploring the world.

In 2003, he received the Special Prize "Chamber of Commerce", "Pavia Young European Art", under the patronage of the Lombardy Region and with a jury chaired by Rossana Bossaglia. In 2006, for the National Painting and Sculpture Prize "Città di Novara", with a jury chaired by Michelangelo Pistoletto, he received the Special Prize for the use of new technologies. In 2010, he was among the finalists in the Photography section of the 4th International Arte Laguna Prize in Venice.  

Since 2015, after more than a decade characterized by experiences also in other artistic fields, such as web design, interior design, and editorial illustration, he has focused his activity exclusively on painting and digital art. In 2023, he began an artistic collaboration with the Italian company CINELLO UNLIMITED, an online art gallery dedicated to contemporary digital art. In 2024, he was among the finalists of the Be Natural Be Wild art competition in Biella.

ARTISTIC RESEARCH

A significant portion of Albanese's artistic research and practice originates from a broad process of exploration and experimentation with expressive forms, inspired by the great Renaissance painters such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Giorgione, traditional Chinese landscape painting, Japanese aesthetics ("yohaku no-bi"), sumi-e, and extending to more recent references like Friedrich, Turner, De Nittis, and Monet. It is also influenced by contemporary artists, especially Morandi, de Chirico, Rothko, Burri, Schifano, and Richter, and in photography, by Stieglitz, Adams, Sugimoto, and Ghirri.

PAINTING

Within the realm of painting, he draws stylistic inspiration from Expressionism. His research explores how the language of painting can continue to evolve, still drawing from the figurative tradition, only to transcend it, sometimes culminating in a synthesis that borders on abstraction, and ultimately leading to the fusion of multiple styles. The aim is to generate a new way of painting that bears witness to time, and through time, to human existence.

He employs various methods and materials from tradition, including drawing, watercolor, and painting, alongside multiple and more modern practices such as the physical or digital manipulation of prints with acrylic paints and varnishes. It is therefore a work of research and experimentation at the same time. He mixes and blends techniques such as tonal painting, gestural painting, thick or watercolor-like impastos, fast and impulsive brushstrokes, sketches, dripping, and stains, helping to create a sense of dynamism and tension. Albanese seeks to convey his own individuality and state of mind through maximum expressiveness, in order to create a visceral and emotional experience for the observer.

PHOTOGRAPHY

The use of photography initially arose from the need to create a photographic archive dedicated to various types of skies and clouds to serve as a reference for landscape paintings and illustrations. Subsequently, the cloud photographs gained increasing importance, eventually becoming the exclusive subject of an aesthetic exploration of ephemeral forms. The photographs, which later undergo a process of photo manipulation, thus become veritable cloudscapes. The clouds, extracted from their context, dominate expanses of water or desert landscapes. Through this choice, Albanese aims to evoke an atmosphere of contemplation, reflection, and estrangement; he wants to create not only aesthetically fascinating images but also invite the viewer to slow down and pay attention to the details of an ephemeral phenomenon frozen in a moment that will never repeat itself in exactly the same way.

In 2024, he also began experimenting with digital photo manipulation techniques on photographs of ancient monuments. This area gave rise to the series of works "Caput Mundi," born from a photographic reportage of Rome, which are subsequently modified on the computer, merging them with images of his paintings, thus creating a hybrid between painting and photography.

CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery)

Computer graphics is the other major component of the artistic research conducted by Albanese. He began to take an interest in it in the early years of the new millennium, fascinated primarily by the potential to create photorealistic images and to elaborate three-dimensional objects, simulating physical reality. From there, he started using various software programs that are now widely used in the creation of special effects (VFX) for cinema, television, advertising, and video games, the so-called CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery). In his case, however, he uses these techniques for the purposes of pure artistic research. The aim is to create the illusion of reality, to realize imaginary landscapes or environments, and to involve the viewer in a dreamlike vision. This is how, for example, the Fluid Forms series, inspired by the theme of water and fluidity, was born. These are three-dimensional animations with interweavings of fluid matter that float in an aseptic void, creating unpredictable entanglements and plays between solids and voids that are inspired by the aesthetic concept of Yohaku no-bi belonging to Japanese culture.

PHILOSOPHY

His aesthetic investigation also draws upon ancient philosophical thought, both Western and Eastern. As an artist, he attempts to identify common ground between the two great cultures, especially through concepts such as "impermanence," "becoming," the "beauty of the unfinished," the "beauty of empty space," "timelessness," and translating them through the various artistic techniques mentioned.

All these disciplines, together, bear witness to a patient work of study and experimentation at the same time. The observation and contemplation of nature and landscape stem from the need to find a new dimension of awareness and interconnection with it. He draws inspiration from the philosophical thought of the ancient tradition, especially Taoism; and as a bridge to the present, he revisits the reflections of the philosopher Umberto Galimberti, who proposes a new ethical attitude of humankind towards nature, beginning with a new process of consciousness and awareness. This involves understanding what respect for the Earth truly means, realizing its current conditions and how negatively the human being has influenced the balance of its ecosystem, thus renouncing an anthropocentric vision and culture that sees the human species as the dominator and exploiter of natural resources; and finally adopting a biocentric vision where at the center there should not be man but life, where everything is interconnected, in relation to everything else. In Albanese's works, precisely to emphasize all these aspects, the human being never appears, as it is the viewer themselves who is invited to contemplate and acquire precisely the awareness of their role in relation to what surrounds them.

EXHIBITIONS

• 2005 – Inkiostro, group show, Chiostro di S. Paolo, Ferrara

• 2006 – L’inquietudine, group show, Milan (Fondazione D’Ars)

• 2010 – Finalist exhibition, 4th Arte Laguna Prize, Venice

• 2024 – Finalist exhibition, Be Natural Be Wild, Biella (4th edition)

AWARDS AND PRIZES

• 2003 – Pavia – Young European Art, Special Award “Chamber of Commerce”

• 2004 – Celeste Award, 1st Edition, San Gimignano

• 2004 – National Award for Painting and Sculpture – City of Novara, Merit Plaque

• 2005 – Mention, Celeste Prize, 2nd Edition, San Gimignano

• 2006 – Special Prize from the Artistic Direction, City of Novara

• 2010 – Finalist, 4th Arte Laguna Prize, Photography section

• 2024 – Finalist, Be Natural Be Wild art competition, Painting section

PUBLICATIONS

• 2005 – National Award for Painting and Sculpture – City of Novara, catalogue, p.18

• 2005 – Celeste Prize, catalogue, Painting Medium section, p.55

• 2006 – City of Novara, catalogue, p.19

• 2010 – 4th Arte Laguna Prize – Venice, catalogue, p.142

• 2024 – Be Natural Be Wild – 4th Edition, Biella, catalogue, p.90

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