Giacomo Zornetta is a self-taught oil painter that works with subjects he captures on camera born in 1999. Despite his young age his attempt to capture the fragility of his subjects is mesmerizing. Zornetta focuses on psychological concepts and conditions through realistic figurative painting.
I speak of desires and questions, of psychological energies, of the symbols of the unconscious; I speak of frailty, of inner fire, of doubts.
Walk us through your academic experience. How do you think your education shaped your career?
As a self-taught artist, I’ve never taken training courses. I’m currently studying law at University after a classical high school education (mainly oriented to Roman/Greek literature). Practicing art as a totally separated activity from my academic studies has both a positive and negative impact on my work: on the one hand, my paintings are conceived in the most genuine way, as my technique and sense of aesthetics are not influenced by other artists’ point of view. On the other hand, the lack of support affected my opportunities of sharing thoughts and experience in an appropriate environment.For this latter reason, I want to start art studies once I’ve taken my law degree, because the need to express through painting is too strong for me to limit it in a small part of my time and work.
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What is indispensable while working in your studio?
I have no particularly original necessity: music, good lighting and a closed door are enough.
Who are your favorite artists and who are the ones that built your creative imaginary?
I grew up admiring Pre-Raphaelites and 800 academic masters, like Alma Tadema and Waterhouse, later I found out Magic Realism and fell in love with the work by Casorati, who's probably the painter I relate to the most: as a young practicer I used to be charmed by canonic and wise technique for the sake of it, while later I was fascinated by portrait as a metalinguistic tool. Besides, I'm also into figurative expressions that are not quite similar to my main research, such as David Hockney's, Paul Gauguin's, Roy Lichtenstein's. I'm always in search of any visual stimulus from randomly picked up authors: I'm strongly attracted by any representation of the human being and their interior world.My other great source of inspiration is cinema, since most of my imagination is based on cinematic-looking mental scenarios, which in the end usually lead to the genesis of an artwork : over time I found many directors like Ingmar Bergman, Terrence Malick, James Ivory, Michael Haneke.
How did COVID-19 impact your way of making art?
My practice is totally focused on oil painting, so I need nothing but my studio, colors and canvases to work. If the pandemic influenced my art, it did only indirectly, because it could not affect my practical process. The life-changing consequences of Covid-19 necessarily influenced my recent experiences, therefore my latest artwork concepts. But I think that Covid’s effect on my art was just as relevant as many other recent events in my life: anything that happens in my life is inevitably destined to be potential matter for a new artwork, as far as that event is able to raise in me new thoughts and emotions.
What is your relationship with social media and how do you use them?
I use social media, in particular Instagram, as an instrument of research and sharing. Growing up in the era of mass social connection has extremely influenced the way I express and share my art, as well as how I look for inspiration and approach to the world of art. Because of that, I think I could not easily separate the personal and exclusive relation with the making of my artworks from the activity of communicating my personal experience through social platforms: this is no longer possible for a modern artist who also seeks a wider connection to the outer artistic environment.I usually post a large part of my results during the process of making an artwork, and I also like how this documentation often looks like an artwork itself.
On the other hand, it's really important for me to find and choose my favorite artists/curators/gallerists in the contemporary scene as a source of constant information and opportunities.
