There are things in art that you will never know unless you visit an artist’s workshop
Many like art, but meeting the artist in the place where they live and work is a whole other experience. Just think of entering the industrial outskirts of Varese, Italy, a hilly area with several crumbling, disused buildings and other businesses still in place, a former railway line, and the Olona river flowing on the valley floor.
Here, among the warehouses, beautiful music spreads from a building with no signs.
It is the home gallery of artist, sculptor and interior designer Andrea Albanese. Beyond any definition, surely one of the most intriguing local artists.
Andrea Albanese is self-taught, a so-called self-made man. An ability hit hard by the circumstances of life, then a life-changing encounter – that with Emilio Tadini* – while he was managing a gym. For over fifteen years, he has been telling about himself to anyone visiting to meet an artist that does not follow the dictates of fashions. His is a sophisticated art, living through layers of materials patiently laid on canvases and objects.
At Andrea Albanese’s workshop, conversation is pleasant, and the ambiance is the intimate one of a coffee enjoyed together. Then the eye falls on something, and it is love at first sight, and you bring home some of the emotions felt that day.
The new series focusing on books has already reached many enthusiasts in Italy and abroad, as well as the interiors of several luxury brands. It is Albanese that created the large panel at the new Atelier Misani at via Cusani 9, Milan, which was fully arranged by the artist himself.
Andrea Albanese saves books from being pulped. He adds substance to written words, and erases memories, fragments, stories while recovering them. He often adds delicate miniatures that become the books’ new characters. These small illustrations create a timeless narrative, free to tell any story.
*Emilio Tadini (1927 – 2002) was an Italian painter, writer and translator, and headed the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan from 1997 to 2000.