Meet Andrea Podenzana | Full Professor of Painting Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara

We had the good fortune of connecting with Andrea Podenzana and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrea, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Tradition, mine is a family of artists that began with a painter named Andrea Podenzana in 1600, from that moment on every generation has had an artist, musician or painter, I chose painting.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My art is based on knowledge of the profession of painter, my research has been aimed at studying the pictorial technique of the great masters of the past Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Rembrant, Turner, Constable, Fattori and Signorini. This research of mine has given me the possibility of having a quality in the execution of painting that allows me to represent my emotions and feelings in the best possible way, and without false modesty I am sure of being able to overcome any challenge that painting offers me.
My pride is in having accepted all the artistic challenges that life has put in front of me, without giving in to any compromise, and the lesson I have learned from it is that I prefer oblivion rather than selling my soul on the market.
I would like the world to be able to see my works, so that it knows that despite the difficulty of the challenges that technology presents to us on a daily basis, painting as a representation of human thought is still alive in my paintings.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I am lucky enough to live in one of the most evocative places from a naturalistic point of view in Italy, between the mountains of the Apuan Alps and the sea of the Cinque Terre, a place that in ancient times was called Lunigiana. I would start from the sea of the Cinque Terre, with a boat tour, that is, admiring them from the sea, then I would go to La Spezia for a visit to the Giovanni Podenzana Ethnographic Museum, who was my grandfather’s uncle, ethnographer, naturalist and musician, and who over the years twenty of 1900 he made a musical tour in the United States, I would taste one of the typical dishes of the cuisine of La Spezia, which is the Mesciua, which has been cooked since the times of ancient Rome, then I would take a tour of the medieval churches of the Lunigiana which allow you to take a journey into nature and history.
With an excursion to the city of Pontremoli, visiting the castle which contains the ancient stele statues of Lunigiana, and if you are lucky you can meet the singer Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari in the streets, often accompanied by his great friend Sting.
I would conclude with a visit to the town of Podenzana, the place of my ancestors, where you can taste an ancient food called Panigaccio, a kind of bread that can be found at the Gambin restaurant, which still cooks it in the manner of the ancients, to be accompanied with wine of the hills of Luni where the vine has been cultivated since the times of the ancient Roman city of Luni.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I thank my father Geraldo Podenzana, a painter who, from my first steps as a child, made me love art and culture, and with his moral example, made me an artist, and my wife Giovanna Bartoli, a painter who supports me and encourages me in my work

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapodenzana/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.podenzana/

Image Credits
The titles of the photos are “landscape”, the oil painting technique on canvas