Federico Mazza
Rome, Italy
Website
federicomazza.it/painting
Social Media
Instagram
web cam series
How would you describe your work?
My pictorial research, despite being entirely self-constructed, unequivocally recalls what the romantic tradition in landscape painting tried to imitate: the search for the sublime generated by the simple vision of Nature, my only God.What inspires you?
I have always experienced movement as a small drama in which a frame (the past) is destroyed and a new one is produced (the future). This nomadic mechanism inherent in existence itself leads me to find great fascination in the landscape that flows through the windows of a moving vehicle. High voltage pylons, abandoned rural houses, gray and foggy roads, rapid and rarefied moments of transition, the impalpability of the landscape. Everything that exists between the departure and the arrival. Speed, in addition to producing noise, produces a series of blurry and definitionless images, very silent and frozen in time. I find something magical in this.Can you speak about your process?
My painting process is varied. For abstract works I don't dare define anything. For figurative paintings the path is much more delineated and precise and is divided into two moments: the long preparation of the support (wood, canvas) with gesso, then the actual painting which leaves very thin layers of colors, devoid of materiality. Except in rare cases when I don't do any preparatory sketches but I paint directly on the canvas, wet on wet, always with colors extremely diluted with various types of solvents.How did you become interested in art?
I believe between 40 and 47 years ago.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
Painters such as Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Albert Bierstadt and the Hudson River School, Gerhard Richter, Edward Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Kazimir Severinovič Malevič."I have nothing to say, and I am saying it” by John Cage
What advice do you have for younger artists?
The only happy man is the painter: let’s paint!
