Textile · Printmaking · Installation
AndreaCesari
Italian artist working in cloth, colour and light: dyed fabrics, gauze and jute composed on black grounds, alongside woodcuts, etchings and urban-scale installations.
Working since 1979 · Studio in Piacenza, Italy
Selected works
43 pieces
Artist’s books
Unique hand-bound volumes in which Cesari’s textile thinking moves onto paper: concertina folds built from the pages of old books, stencilled lettering, sewn bindings and cut paper figures. Photographs by Mauro Corinti.
I 49 Raggi
A concertina volume kept in a raw cardboard slipcase. Across the folds, forty-nine coloured paper rays scatter over columns of found printed text, while the stencilled title works as cover, signature and score.
Io Sono
A folding book on identity built from printed pages and newsprint, hand-cut chains of paper figures and fragments of quoted text. The sequence moves from white through colour into black, with a chain of figures escaping the last pages.
About
Andrea Cesari (b. 1950, Codogno, Italy) is a textile and visual artist based in Piacenza. Trained in painting at the Istituto Gazzola in Piacenza and in engraving at the international courses of Urbino, in 1982, at thirty-two, he left his job to study graphic design at ISIA Urbino under Michele Provinciali, and moved from the figurative tradition of woodcut and etching toward a language built from cloth itself: dyed fabrics, gauze, jute and found materials composed for the way they absorb and reflect light.
In 1983 he brought colour to the scale of the city with dyed textile banners across the walls of Urbino, and in 1986 he dressed the seven arches of the Loggia Comunale of Codogno with lunettes of dyed cotton. For twenty-five years he taught graphic design, at the Istituto d’Arte in Monza and later in Crema and Cremona. Since the 1990s he has worked closely with the poet and critic Amedeo Anelli, curator of many of his exhibitions, including the 2014 retrospective covering more than forty years of work.
In the studio, Piacenza
“There is fundamentally no material that does not interest me, fabrics, monochrome or polychrome, with material resonances; surfaces that absorb or reflect light. My task is to pass on to the viewer the energy a work has gathered along its whole path of growth.”
From the artist’s notes
“A vast compositional field in which colour, matter, sign and figure freely balance one another and remain in mutual tension.”
Amedeo Anelli, from the catalogue of the 2014 retrospective
“An artist who delivers his message with bare efficacy, without indulging in narrative or decorative concessions.”
Aldo Caserini, forme 70’, 2020
Exhibitions
International
Archivio Libri d’Artista, Milan
with “Homage an Jacob Böhme”, Görlitz, Germany
Castellón, Spain
Selected exhibitions
ITS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
Fondazione Scuola di Arti e Mestieri, Suzzara; a work now in the Fondazione's collection
Regione Emilia-Romagna
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
Fondazione Scuola di Arti e Mestieri, Suzzara
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
Fondazione Scuola di Arti e Mestieri, Suzzara
with the Archivio Libri d'Artista, Vimercate
studio in Via Sant’Antonino 34, Piacenza
curated by Silvana Leonardi, Archivio Libri d’Artista, Milan
curated by Fernanda Fedi, Mavi Ferrando and Adam Vaccaro, Milan
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
curated by Amedeo Anelli, studio in Via Sant’Antonino 34, Piacenza, 16-17 June
RecoOpera, Piacenza
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
studio in Via Sant’Antonino 34, Piacenza
studio in Via Sant’Antonino 34 and RecoOpera, Piacenza
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
Spazio Arte, Sesto San Giovanni, with an auction led by Philippe Daverio
curated by Amedeo Anelli, 120 works, Vecchio Ospedale Soave, Codogno, until January 2015
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Piacenza
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Castello di Fombio
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Scuola Griffini, Casalpusterlengo
Castello di Fombio
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
studio in Via Sant’Antonino 34, Piacenza, 30 September
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Scuola Ada Negri, Caselle Landi
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Formigara
Caselle Landi
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Percorsi nell’Arte, Il Viaggiatore, Sant’Angelo Lodigiano
curated by Amedeo Anelli, IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
yearly editions through 2013, curated by Amedeo Anelli, Museo parrocchiale, Casalpusterlengo
curated by Amedeo Anelli, Liceo Gandini, Lodi
IIS Cesaris, Casalpusterlengo
presented by Amedeo Anelli, Montodine
curated by R. De Grada, F. De Filippi, S. Pizzi and A. Anelli, Banca Popolare di Lodi
IPSSCT Piero Sraffa, Crema, 4-8 April
Spazio arte contemporanea, Codogno
Collegio Raffaello, Urbino
Pistoia
Lodi
Municipality of Codogno, former Ospedale Soave, Codogno
former Municipal Library, Casalpusterlengo
Serrone della Villa Reale, Monza
with Pietro Arnoldi, Antonio Buso, Mauro Ceglie and Gabriele Nuzarello, San Donato Milanese
Casa di Raffaello, Urbino
Palazzo Sormani, Milan
Galleria Il Gelso, Lodi
for the association Il Cammino, Somaglia
Centro culturale Il Gelso, Lodi; again in 1990 and 1991
Studio Sargam, Milan; Castello di Godego
Chiesa dell’Angelo, Lodi
“Acquibaleno” as stage backdrop of the fashion shows, Pesaro; again in 1989 with seven new lunettes, and at the 19th Rassegna Adriatica della moda “Dossier dell’eleganza”
Palazzo Oliva, Sassoferrato
Piazza XX Settembre, Codogno, 8-23 November
seven lunettes of dyed cotton, Loggia Comunale, Codogno
Palazzo Ducale, Pesaro
five-metre assembled textile work, Cattolica
textile installation with Michele Provinciali, Palazzo Ducale walls, Urbino
figurative work, Bergamo
Over seventy exhibitions in Italy and abroad since 1981, with recent participations through 2024. Full exhibition history available on request.
Press
Aldo Caserini, forme 70’
Aldo Caserini, Il Cittadino
Aldo Caserini, Il Cittadino
Amedeo Anelli, Il Lodigiano
Cristina Vercellone, Il Cittadino
“Rough, peremptory and dazzling, his works point to the fragility of the world and to its impermanence.”
Cristina Vercellone, Il Cittadino, 1998
A selection. The PDF lists 25 articles from 1986 to 2020 with a summary and quotations; the original pages are kept in the studio archive.
Contact
Works are available for exhibition and acquisition. For inquiries about available pieces, studio visits or collaborations, write to the studio. Messages are answered personally.
- Studio
- Piacenza, Italy
- Visits
- Studio visits by appointment.