Artospective: Paintings by Andrea Solaja from Italy.

My turn

An Interview with Andrea Solaja.

Who and where are you from?

My name is Andrea Solaja, I was born in Belgrade (Serbia) and I live in Trieste, Italy.

How you got into this?

I come from an artistic family. As a child I spent my days drawing as all the kids do, but the things changed after the bombing of Serbia in 1999. I closed myself off and the art became my way to communicate with people. After graduation I’ve done several painting workshops and now I’m completely devoted to art.

What is your driving force?

Through the colours and the body position I use, I am asking you to open your mind and heart, to ponder and understand what I feel. My works are sometimes also guardians of memories which are coated with melancholy and old familiar habits that faded away. Telling stories using shapes is a way, my own personal way, to let feelings out, to free myself and close the circle.

What kind of work you do and why?

I prefer to use dark colours, as if the light was kept on the inside and protected. I want my paintings to tell stories and convey my feelings and in order to do so I use the body, the female body. A precise pose allows me to transfer onto canvas what clearly took shape in my mind. I am a narrative artist. Painting is the way I communicate, through it I am able to open up and express what words can’t really explain.

The following series of works tells about the violence in the world.

Instabilità (First Prize in Figurative Art ‘’Lilian Caraian’'

Invasione

Inquietudine

My turn

Pensieri Blu

My last project ‘’When the night comes’’,

It is an autobiographical project, it tells about the moving to the underground bunkers during the bombing, towards the dark and cold spaces where people became a single person with the same fears praying to survive the night;