ALEJANDRO CAIAZZA
Under COVID Life Goes On
Mixed Media on Canvas
30” x 40”
2021
About
With a truly international background, Alejandro Caiazza (b. 1972) is a well-traveled mixed-media artist with an abundance of experience in life and emotion. Caiazza was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, although his family soon transplanted to Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, where he was raised for the rest of his childhood and teenage epochs. The artist studied in Caracas, Venezuela, where he received a BFA in Architecture and Fine Arts at the Jose Maria Vargas University. After spending most of his life in Venezuela, Caiazza immigrated to Paris in 2000 to continue working as a professional artist. It is here that he studied at the reputable L’Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts and attended courses taught by his teacher and mentor, Ouanes Amor. Today, Caiazza is living and working in New York City.
By 2010, Caiazza developed a distinguishable and universal language in his work, which he describes as mixing various traces, signs, figures, and colors. He transforms and melds these together to communicate common, recognizable feelings and sensations. Frequently working with the emotion of anguish, at first glance his mixed-media artworks appear whimsical and delighting, yet soon open up to a deeper and darker prism. The artist discloses elementary images through the use of figuration and a soft yet contrasting color palette. Along with the use of thin lines and extensive layering, the images are often inflicted with a sense of knowledge that is usually reserved for adults. With eyes and faces full of expression and sometimes grotesqueness, Caiazza imposes cruelty and criticality onto his subjects. Agitators to authority, free dissenters living lives of low responsibility, forever children – these are his people.
Caiazza’s style is categorized as brut and neo-expressionist. His prevailing mediums include acrylic paint, bar oil, charcoal, and spray paint on surfaces such as cardboard, canvas, and wood. His noted influences are Jean Dubuffet, Jonathan Meese, Georg Baselitz, William de Kooning, Jean Michel Basquiat, and A.R. Penk. He has shown at galleries in Venezuela, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States for over 20 years.