Pino Zurzolo - Painter

I come from a little town called Reggio di Calabria, where my family is still living. We try to make it down there as often as possible, because it is really beautiful there.

We currently live in Ainring, which is located in
Berchtesgadener Land, a county of Upper Bavaria, Germany.

Here is the information about Ainring in German.

If you are in the area, please stop by. We welcome all visitors and would love to chat with you over a nice hot cup of espresso!

Many people ask me how I got started in painting, and how I find my themes. Actually, it is a journey that never ends for me. No two pieces are the same, but there are similarities that are easily recognizable.

When I begin a piece, I don't have any idea what to paint, not even what colors I want to use. So everyday, when I pick up my paintbrush, I simply listen to my music - usually the Bach Suites, because I love cello - and start making big strokes, using any color, any brush. Once I get the first colors on the canvas, my ideas begin to flow. This is the easiest part of painting for me.

What comes next is a trial and error process, and since I am usually working with oil, there are never any mistakes that can't be corrected or covered up. I've even taken unfinished pieces and destroyed them by completely covered them with new ideas, entirely new subjects. Some of my works have so many layers that if you look closely, there is a veritable rainbow of colors from previous attempts.

As my ideas start to be more consolidated, I begin to see a picture, a more clear idea of what each canvas can become. When that happens, I must respect what has already begun, and do my best to completely disconnect my thinking from what I am doing, to simply "go with the flow". It is very difficult to do, because all of us are naturally drawn towards familiar objects and pictures, but that is what I am working against. A successful painting for me is one that comes truly from the deepest part of my soul, one that is not created by my thoughts or preconceptions.

So for anyone who is stuck at the beginning, all I can say is make a mess! The bigger the mess, the better. Oil painting is the most liberating of all the disciplines for me, and the more you can simply let go of your preconceptions and just get your ideas and feelings out on the canvas, the more rewarding and expressive your work will be.

Pino Zurzolo does not depict landscapes, portray people or arrange still lifes. Instead of interpreting, he recreates in completely new structures, forms and colours. Although they are naturally-occuring objects, their creator blows unconventional life into them. That is not abstract art, but an intensely and consciously reduced language of shape.

In his paintings, however, the artist goes one step further by intensifying reduction to the point where it becomes abstraction. When I reflect on an abstract colour painting, with its meditative aura, it is not just pure colour, but careful layers of rosé, pink almost, overlaid on white, that give the painting its tension and structure. He spins a yarn, allowing shapes, colours and mysterious symbols to tumble out of a cornucopia onto the paper.

Zurzolo's art is a synthesis of Italian baroque and Far Eastern meditation. This is hardly surprising, as his role-model is his teacher and friend Yoshi Takahasi. He has inspired him and introduced him to the Asian-Japanese world of emotions. In many etchings, however, Pino Zurzolo also displays archaic tendencies in his contemplative work, yet he is always a painter in the best tradition of the word and therefore it is colours that define his work. At the same time, he has assimilated the soil and the sun of his Calabrian birthplace. They have become fundamental elements, that are not only a part of the artist far away from home, but are also reproduced in his work.

Zurzolo plays with colours in his etchings with virtuosity, but the arbitary juxtaposition and layering are not coincidental. it is precisely the harmony of colour that creates the overall impression, that kindles a feeling of well-being in the viewer - the satisfying conviction that he is holding a work of sun-drenched art in his hand.

Increasingly, human beings, above all the human face, have become the theme of his work, through which he lays bare man's essential condition. With his etching-needle and colours he is almost dissecting his imaginary portraits.

In this way PinoZurzolo has build up his own individual world of shape and colour. Although he himself refuses to produce combinations with concrete thems, the viewer is perfectly entitled to look for them in his work. It was no less a person than Marc Chagal who, in essenessence, said: "I paint what I feel -I find out later from the critics what I have painted." Zurzolo the artist surely experiences the same phenomenon.