Anna Lopopolo Paintedwords

Biography Anna Lopopolo was born on June 22nd 1989 in Crema, Italy, where she currently lives and works. She graduated at the Bruno Munari Art School, completing her education at the Brera Academy of Milan where she graduated in Art History and Cultural Heritage Sciences. Then she enthusiastically and fiercely jumped into the art world, improving her unique style and engaging an intimate and edgy evolutionary journey . According to Anna Researching is a way of life and her artistic path is featured both by curiosity – an inner quality of the human being approaching Art – and by the anguish pushing her to always search for herself. Anna's creative potential is deeply connected to her emotional universe. A combination of mind and soul, reason and irrationality, trascendence and immanence – a duality represented by the clashing meeting between words and visage, verbal and visual communication, conscious and subconscious, material and nonmaterial. This mix is reflected by the black-and-white style and by Anna's own personality, dominated by the “all or nothing” philosophy. In these PaintedWords – literally, paintings created with words – the agony enclosed in a suffering spirit blows up in a shout of liberation just like Edvard Munch's Scream. By the character's selection and their words Anna introduces ideas and theories. A Fight for the right to live and speak. The right of freedom... a Freedom of mind! Anna's signature style is therefore the WORD, the true leading figure, which is translated and repeated over and over on the canvas until it becomes a sort of mantra. Her paintings show faces that at first sight may seem like photographs – losing this naturalistic effect as soon as we get closer to the artworks, as soon as the viewer perceives the presence of words. By overlapping layers of words – whole lyrics or books written by the represented subject – the visage takes form and comes alive. The leading character is the WORD, taking form and coming alive by composing the visage of the one who pronounced it. - Anna Lopopolo.

Anna is not keen on putting her work into words by explaining it or reducing it to empty categories. If I wanted to plainly explain what's going on with my soul, with my heart and mind, if I wanted people to know at first sight, if I wanted them not to wonder of be confused, well I would have written endless essays full of catch frases and faultless punctuation – a whole bunch of empty and meaningless pages. A jubilation of high-sounding and self-indulgent words, just like those senteces coming from boring and judging minds. Therefore... I believe my paintings can speak for themselves. There is no need from me to add more words than the ones living on the canvas. Caging an artwork into foolish concepts and bare categories, tailoring around it a fine dress of aesthetical fiction is Death of the artistic reasearch. Art lives! - Anna Lopopolo

This idea is not far from Edward Hopper's statement: “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint”. A fundamental uncertainty and frailty paves Anna's work, highlighted by a constant scrutiny of herself – as if she was never good or worthy enough. An endless inner analysis pushing her to go always forward. A constant research of her own Self and the missing part of her, often leading to look into the others in search for someone who could fulfill the role of Muse. Actually it is Art elevanting and fully completing the artist. As soon as she will truly accept this completeness and force she will be able to benefit from her energy, gaining confidence, fighting for herself and really making the difference. Art as sickness, Art as cure. A Janus-faced monster constantly pushing Anna to love and hate her works and herself. Art is my way to communicate, my language. - Anna Lopopolo 

In Ancient Greek the word “logos” summarizes a carnival of different meanings: it expresses the word – the original cell of communication, of our need to materialize ideas into sounds; it represents the discourse, a structure a words building up step by step the idea; it means thought, philosophy and scientific theory. Here the “logos” appears in all its shapes, it permeates Anna Lopopolo's artworks just like the nervous system stimulates the human body. Words – in their most primitive form – literallt compose the essence of who pronounced them first. The face, of course, but also the mind, the most intimate feelings, the soul. WORDS are what makes the subjects alive, what makes them fully “human”. Anna's theory spreads beyonf the canvas boundaries. It penetrates a philosophical dimension devoid of the lethargic barrennes of dogma to enter the subject flesh, muscles and blood. From Patti Smith to Bob Dylan, from David Bowie to Pier Paolo Pasolini, from Robert Mapplethorpe to Jean-Michel Basquiat – the word takes wings and dances, hides, fiercely explodes on the canvas while creating a black-and-white universe defeating every wall, providing a direct and meaningful dialogue between work, viewer and artist. There is the human being on those canvases in all its splendid imperfection. The represented human being, watching us with unbearable intensity, but also the representing one – the artist, leaving a fragment of herself in every single, small, cursed, precious word. An aesthetic of Logos is waht Anna Lopopolo is offering us.

Carlotta Biffi – art curator

Exhibitions:

September 2014 – Group exhibition “Astrungarte 2014” Art Festival with the A&A Association – Mercato Austrungarico, Crema, Italy October 2014 – Group exhibition “Mondi di Carta 2014” Cultural Event – Museo Civico, Crema, Italy June 2015 – Group exhibition “Pro Loco Crema”, Crema, Italy February 2016 – Solo exhibition “Calisto Café”, Vailate (CR), Italy May 2016 – Group exhibition “MAD Gallery”, Milan, Italy July 2016 – Group exhibition “Bleech Festival”, Piacenza, Italy August 2016 – Solo exhibition “Laboratorio aperto”, Bussana Vecchia, Italy October 2016 – Group exhibition “Paratissima 2016”, Art Festival, Turin, Italy January 2017 – Solo exhibition “Sala Agello”, Museo Civico, Crema, Italy February 2017 – Solo exhibition “Café de la Paix”, Trento, Italy October 2017 – Solo exhibition “La casa degli Archi”, Bussana Vecchia, Italy November 2017 – Group exhibition “Paratissima 2017”, Art Festival, Turin, Italy March 2018 – Group exhibition “MA-EC”, Milan, Italy April 2018 – Group exhibition “CREMA.comX 2018”, Crema, Italy April 2018 – Group exhibition “Calisto Café”, Vailate (CR), Italy September 2018 – Group exhibition “Santa Maria di Porta Ripalta”, Crema, Italy – 1° Prize Competition “Contro la Violenza. Simboli per Comunicare. Simboli per Agire” curated by Soroptimist International Club January 2019 – Group exhibition “Somewhere in Northern Italy”, Crema, Italy June 2019 – Solo exhibition “Caffé del Museo”, Crema, Italy June 2019 – Solo exhibition “Pro Loco Crema”, Crema, Italy August 2019 – Solo exhibition “Biennale di Soncino”, Soncino (CR), Italy October 2019 – Group exhibition “Santa Maria di Porta Ripalta”, Crema, Italy – Competition “Sguardi al femminile sull'Ambiente, per un orizzonte di segni e immagini di eco-sostenibilità” curated by Soroptimist International Club October 2019 – ArtParma Fair 2019, Parma, Italy November 2019 – Arte Contemporanea Forlì Fair, Forlì, Italy November 2019- Padova Arte Fair, Padova, Italy 

2020  – Group exhibition "IntrecciArte", Pietrasanta, Lucca, Italy