Her oil paintings, which evoke the impression of photographs, are captivating and they possess a delicate yet rebellious spirit. The artist aims to capture the essence of Italy, unveiling the beauty of everyday life and showing fictional scenarios that exists in an indefinable time and place.
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Anna Never is an Italian artist, born in Bassano del Grappa, in 1980. She studied art in one of the wonderful and renowned academies of the country, that is Accademia di Belle Arti of Venice. Her first solo exhibition took place at Blue Gallery, in Bologna, where she currently lives and works, in 2019. Since then, she has been part of several group shows and she started new collaborations.
Her paintings are the result of a working process, that sees the artist completely involved in the painting, trying to clean up the inner chaos formed by the images that she has in her mind. The tumult of images Anna wants to find a composition to, is inspired by things that might be strange and discomforting to people. In fact, she aims to capture the beauty of everyday life, that particular ordinary scenes that people overlook, depicting the authentic Italy, in particular during the colder months.
Trying to give a different image of the Italian country, that goes beyond the clichéd tourist images, Anna Never uses oil as a medium, through a highly realistic style, giving to her paintings a distinct personality. The scenes and characters depicted, brought to life thanks to the use of sepia tones and darkness alongside vibrant pops of red and cool teal, evoke the impression of photographs taken with an analog camera. In fact, the realism of her paintings makes the viewer questioning if the artworks are truly paintings or photographs.
She mainly focuses on representing fictional scenarios, which seem to exist in another dimension, and characters who are never defeated. Indeed, their gaze shows that they could fight against everything and everyone who tries to make them submit. Hence, they seem not to have fear of anybody. For all these reasons, Anna’s painting is open dispute with herself, with the world and its reasons.
For instance, “Notte degli idoli” contains all the concepts described about Anna’s art. In the background, there is a monumental house, with a staircase surrounded by solid columns, which seems to be on fire. While in the foreground, there is a group of people, who are lost in their own thoughts, without be worried about the situation. These people, who are mainly boys and girls (except for a man in the center) wants to have fun, and they seem to be together and alone at the same time. They give the impression to need to have fun, in order to escape from their inner thoughts and monsters that hunt them. This artwork is an example of how Anna wants to focus on the disputes and the conflicts that grip people and their minds and in order to ensure that these scenes tend towards realism, she always includes a touch of almost hidden light that gives depth and life to a setting that is often nocturnal or twilight.
Cover Image: Anna Never. Senza Titolo 8, 2022. Courtesy of Artsight Gallery
Written by: Kooness
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