Marzia Colonna MRBS

Mango Seller 80 x 100cm collage

MARZIA COLONNA’s collages centre on the things she loves, the land and sea that surrounds her Dorset home, the places she visits, interiors of her studio, flowers from her garden, her sculpture. All are represented in cut or ripped paper she has painted beforehand with mostly abstract marks and patterns. To her sculptor’s sense of form and texture, she adds a powerful sense of colour, bringing together bright and earth colours in deeply satisfying and original combinations.

Marzia Colonna was born in Pisa in 1951. She entered art school aged 12 and continued to study at the Academia di Belle Arti in Florence. In 1970 she moved to England with her husband Robert Montagu. Her first solo exhibition in London was in 1979. Since then she has exhibited regularly.

Her work is in many private and corporate collections in Europe, the United States and Australasia. Since 1985 she has lived and worked in West Dorset. A major sculpture was purchased in 2001 by the Jerwood foundation and in 2002 by Newby Hall sculpture collection. Public commissions include a crucifix for Salisbury Cathedral (2002), ‘St Adhelm’ for Sherborne Abbey (2004), ‘Mermaid’ for the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy (2007), ‘Kite Flyer’ for Winchester (2009) and ‘Earth and Sea’, a life-sized piece in Krakow. She is represented in London by the Portland Gallery.

Autumn 2023 will be her sixth major exhibition at Sladers Yard.

AVAILABLE COLLAGES

BRONZE

GICLÉE PRINTS

Her sculpture is based on the human form, which she uses to express what we all share as human beings. It fascinates her that wherever we come from, whatever our race or religion, we feel the same basic needs and desires. She sees the body as the vessel of human emotion, touching in its combination of fragility and strength. Many of her bronzes, and indeed of her paper sculptures, reveal the tenderness with which she views her fellow human beings.

ROGER BERTHOUD COLOUR AND FORM, SCUPLTURE AND COLLAGE MARZIA COLONNA 2002

Commitment permeates all of Marzia Colonna’s work, whether in her celebrated landscapes of the Dorset sea and cliffs where she lives, or Italy or Cuba or Mexico or other places she has visited. Or in her still lifes of flowers, leaves, jugs, tools, African instruments, fish and other sea creatures, and even a Cuban blackbird called the toti.

The results are images that manage to be both definitive and subtle, a tonal mix of layers of colour and texture that capture the internal mood of a landscape or a still life in a way that words fail to describe. But that is what art is, right? It does what words cannot.

TRACY CHEVALIER FOREWORD TO MARZIA COLONNA CATALOGUE 2020

Marzia Colonna The Kite-Flyer of Winchester

28 page full colour stapled paperback book. 20 x 20 cm. Original story and pictures by Marzia Colonna. Published by Marzia Colonna. For children. Available for £5.99 + £2.50 p&p.

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