Piero Scandura was born in Pistoia, lives and works in Fosdinovo. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara obtaining a diploma and specialization in Visual Arts – painting; he is currently a tenured state lecturer in the discipline of Art and Image. The didactic and pictorial experience at the Academy was strongly influenced by the charisma and personality of Maestro Umberto Buscioni, whose art, depth and communicative strength he appreciated.
Painter, graphic designer and designer, he collaborates with various organizations and companies. He has exhibited in various locations and art spaces in Italy and abroad, such as the “Rouge Garance” gallery in Montferrand (France), the Lacke & Farben art gallery in Berlin, and the “Turelli” gallery in Montecatini Terme. The art critic Paolo Levi inserts him in the publication “Levi Museum, Museum Artists” while one of his graphics is present in the Pescia Paper Museum. The pictorial activity from 1996 to 1998 is characterized by participation in the activity of the “Atelier” Gallery in Carrara and by the meeting with the art historian Prof. Giorgio Di Genova and Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti. In the exhibition “Pensieri in corso” at that Gallery, a reference point of the 80s and 90s of many of the artistic experiments of the Apuan area, he presented a series of works that combined color and “sign”, in particular “automatic writing”. From 1999 to 2005 he collaborated with the Municipality of Fosdinovo, the Province of Massa- Carrara and the Tuscany Region in cultural and artistic events. In 2009 the cycle of works dedicated to the “Rooms” was born, presented with a solo exhibition of the same title, curated by Renato Carozzi. What magically appears, in the richness of the colors that become the soundtrack, is a neutral space, a familiar and at the same time alien place where emotions are rarefied, corners like moments of suspended life. There is also the presence of shadows, of fantastic projections that represent the trace of a past or a present and future temporal passage that chase each other but cannot coexist. In 2012 he was included by the “Barbara Paci art Gallery” of Pietrasanta as his own artist in the catalog of the Verona art fair and with the patronage of the same he presented a solo exhibition entitled “Non places” at the Palazzo Ducale in Massa, at edited by Cinzia Compalati. This neologism, coined in the 90s by the sociologist Marc Augè, indicated all those public spaces without their own anthropological identity, anonymous and impersonal passageways but capable of infecting those who pass through them with the same alienating atmosphere. The exhibition was characterized by the unusual installation of paintings, set in “rooms” recreated with commonly used design objects. In the series entitled “tree chair” the search for balance between identity and abstraction identifies the object – chair in an open space where the tree expands bringing attention to color, abstract sign and energy that painting always draws.
From 2019 to 2020 in the works “le vele – room and sea”, presented in a solo show in Pietrasanta, the dualism of me / the other appears in a new form. There is no longer the expectation, optimistic, sunny but still fixed, there is the sail, bold, cheerful, colorful, full of life; the space around it is also dynamic, rich in light and color, an open stage that opens up to a world without borders, with which it shares the same wonder. From 2021 a new beginning: “Cold sessions – I am me … and the enigma of color”. Color is not only a sensitive property of bodies but a complex, ambiguous and polyvalent phenomenon, with an archetypal constant but also multiple cultural implications. Even the object, be it the most domestic or the most sophisticated, has the same nature because, especially when depicted or imagined, it succumbs to the evocative power of the unconscious. What is the relationship, then, between the color and the object represented, understood as a symbol and unveiling of the ego? Perhaps in this double enigma lies the hypnotic fascination of Piero Scandura’s latest works, in which we witness, astonished spectators, the perennial encounter / clash between the inside and the outside, the cold and the heat, the said and the unspoken.