Angela Margherita Leotta

Angela Margherita Leotta was born in Italy, Sicily, in Catania on December 28, 1974. In 1989, she moved with her family to Lombardy, in northern Italy. During her academic studies, under the guidance of Profs. Paolo Baratella and Laura Tonani, the artist approaches expressionist and gestural painting that she feels akin to this way of being.

Through the pictorial gesture, Leotta has the opportunity to search for what is the existence of hers in the world...

The Strength of Unrest

 “ (…) She distorts the world, reduces it to what is primitive and essential: movement, energy, heat, color. It wears these colors, it changes its walls that from straight becomes darting, crooked and sudden, bends, moves. Her strong figures move in an undefined space. The gaunt, hollowed out, suffering faces scream the restlessness of the "Joan of Arc" who painted them. It is as if the fire that flows in Angela's veins, as she manages to make it flow like volcano lava, on the works she paints. Fire that purifies and restores Life. Rebirth, resilience, justice, for whom justice did not have. Those millions of bodies that the sea has sucked up helpless. Those souls who were just looking for a new world. A hope of revenge. The survivors scream, as in the famous painting by Edvard Munch, in all their pain. Symbolic synthesis of human suffering.

The backgrounds behind the figures let you glimpse the light, the horizon made up of wavy, sinuous and superimposed. The faces are devoid of age connotations and the clothes are simplified and reduced to hints, traits that cover the strong, muscular and angular bodies. Sometimes those bodies seem, liquid apparitions or visions, dynamic and agitated dimensions, noisy elasticities at times almost annoying, but which force you to reflect. (…) ”

Critical excerpt from Malù Lattanz

Most important EXHIBITIONS:

1997 Exhibition / Installation / Multimedia Event entitled ORESTEA, curated by Paolo Baratella and the Research Institute of Artistic Anatomy of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, at the I.T.S.O.S. Albe Steiner of Milan with donation of the "Oreste" Polyptych

1997 Event entitled "OPEN AIR ART", curated by Laura Tonani, in the historic center of Bellagio

1997 Event entitled LIGHT AND COLOR IN THE CITY, curated by Laura Tonani, in the space in front of the entrance to Villa Casati in Cologno Monzese (MI) with relative donation of the work The Ideal City

1997 Event at the historic center of Dongo, curated by Laura Tonani, with donation of the work performed, to the Dongo municipal library

1998 Collective exhibition entitled FESTA DEL SAN MARTINO, curated by Laura Tonani, in the former San Martino psychiatric hospital in Como

2000 Impromptu PAINTERS IN CERTOSA 2000, curated by Ferdinando Zanzottera, at the Certosa of Milan, obtaining the third place

2001 Collective exhibition entitled CIB'ARTE, Food in art and the eating of art in the works of fifteen contemporary artists, curated by Ferdinando Zanzottera, at the Certosa of Milan

DONATIONS:

2007 Donation of the work Dance, from the series of works created during the period of Voices from the Mosaic, to the private collection of the artist Victor Manuel Contreras.

2021 Invited to participate with a work in the First Biennale D'Arte in Tribute to Maestro Giuseppe Scalvini, by the Director, Painter and Maestro Cristiano Plicato Curator of the Scalvini Museum of Desio, and with the collaboration of the Historian and Critic of 'Arte Vera August, from 9 May to 16 May 2021

PUBLICATIONS:

2021/05/01, Publication of the artist’s first art monograph: The Strength of Unrest, with the critical presentation of the art critic Malu Lattanzi

AWARDS:

2021/05/15, The artist received the Prize and the Scalvini Museum Plate, from the City of Desio, awarded on the occasion of the first Biennale D'arte in tribute to Maestro Giuseppe Scalvini, by the Director, Painter and Maestro Cristiano Plicato and with the collaboration of the art historian and art critic Vera Agosti