Renzo Crociara was born in Cordigoro (Ferrara) on February 4 1952. Already as a very young man he devoted himself to painting inspired by social intimate themes and evolved over the years to an extreme realism. In the late 60s Crociara moved on to working on large canvasses and produced, almost, exclusively, self-portraits. The latter works were later displayed in his personal exhibition at the Centro Arti Visive of the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in 1982. In the meantime Crociara travelled around France, Spain and the United States and held, in 1983, his personal exhibition at the Plusart gallery in Venezia-Mestre. Through all this, his painting style changed dramatically over the years to turn afresh to a classical imagery and, not randomly, to everyday themes such as interiors, beds, shirts and commonplace objects. And so eye-glasses, a plane ticket, an envelope or a leather jacket become the erratic players of an individual ongoing story. Finally, Renzo Crociara's latest production is an altogether new chapter of his Art, consistent but different, a further, innovative development in an artistical itinerary whose future evolution can hardly be guessed. All in Crociara's paintings turns into atmosphere, a transmutation of reality into the pictorial dimension, a vibrant emotion, pure poetry. All differences between objects and space, between figure and figure become blurred under a cloud of hazy, vaporous and yet tangible atmosphere: all things in it have an unearthly, gauze-like appearance to them, they show as a revelation of nature in its spiritual essence, in its primal substance. Now all in Crociara has changed: his still lives, his landscapes have grown to be mysterious and secluded places of the soul, where everything can charm and strike us in the very depths of our hearts. |