ANNAMARIA ZANELLA, Italy

Italian jewellery artist ANNAMARIA ZANELLA graduated from The Pietro Selvatico Institute of Padua jewellery department in 1985. In 1992, she received her diploma in sculpture at the Venice Academy of Art.
She embarked on a personal and artistic quest for contemporary jewellery when she began working at the Padua Institute in 1987.
The artist tells about the adornment that it reflects the events of her life.
“It’s hard to explain how my jewellery is created, but certainly in sublimation to the environment – sometimes… in absolute emptiness, sometimes on my way home from the countryside, I suddenly notice an Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) villa, an old wooden door outside, washed and wind-blown advertising posters, or colorful fruit baskets in the Padua market, movies, books. But every start is always about drawing, sketching or a sentence on a white piece of paper. ”
Jewellery uses “precious metals” and “precious stones”. Iron that looks like gold, paper that looks like lazurite, aluminum that looks like a sea sponge, broken pieces of glass that have the same light and brilliance as gemstones, plastic, glass, burnt wood, various pigments and oxides. “I love the color of rust, but I find the blue color transcendental. I made the ultramarine blue pigment according to the recipes of the 14th century. Very finely crushed in porcelain mortar and then added the natural binders (egg yolk, honey). This is a kind of combined alchemy between modern materials (steel cloth, titanium, iron) and a mineral that resembles the depths of the sky and the sea. ”
As a poet who translates his emotions into words, spending all his power to find the perfect balance in poetry. The artist gives the adornment shape, color and functionality, using the lightest materials – wood, plastic, aluminum, enamel, pigment.

“… A noble color, a beautiful color, the most perfect of all colors …” Italian painter Cennino Cennini wrote in his book IL LIBRO DELL ‘ARTE, circa 1400, about an ultramarine made from Lapis Lazuli powder. This blue color is a color of transcendence and spirituality that many artists use to this day to represent spirituality, beauty and nobility, even in their abstract forms.
“I created works where blue becomes a jewel.”

BLUE HEART 2015
Brooch
The work represents a new conceptual, abstract, metaphysical heart. Tubes, arteries, are considered to be the “filter” of our time. Blue light heart, this muscle is indispensable forever, it works quietly in our body day after day.
Each element of this abstract blue heart is made using fire, and each element is recycled from the Renaissance book, colored blue with pure Lapis Lazuli powder.
Burnt thermoplastics, Lapis Lazuli powder pigment, resin, gold.
cm 9.5 x 6 x 2.5
Photo: DANIELA MARTIN

“Colors are emotions. I can’t imagine jewellery without colors, without enamel, without pigment. The color of the metal itself is cold, but oxidized iron creates a wonderful unity and color scheme. I love the color of rust, but I find the blue color transcendental.

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Developing the idea of a work of art is a long internal process that is suddenly reflected – in complete silence, my thoughts and feelings and everything in my head that is structuring. I sketch, draw, write down, and various pieces of paper that sometimes look like chaos, but it is from these thoughts that a collection emerges.

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