For Alessandro Teoldi, canvas is never just a support for a painting. On the contrary, the artist’s research could be summarized as an exploration of the expressive possibilities of fabric. Teoldi created his first works by stitching together pieces of blankets, preferring the ones that airlines offer to passengers. In these objects, he found a comfortable domesticity during a period of his life divided between Italy and the United States. These works have been followed by more complex agglomerates, in which Teoldi combines canvases and cuts of fabric, oil paints and pastels, inks and charcoals to create his images.
With this mix of materials, Teoldi revisits and updates the traditional iconographies of Western painting. The influences of Piero della Francesca, Mario Sironi, Giorgio Morandi, as well as Mario Mafai, Filippo De Pisis, and Salvo, emerge and stratify onto one another, like blankets on defenseless bodies, veils on shy faces, bandages on open wounds.
