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Tony Cassanelli

Born December 6th 1979   (Bari, Italy)
 

Education/ Artist Training

1995-98  - Concluded a private training in sculpture lasted three years with the
sculpture Franco Scaringi in Trani (Southern Italy), meanwhile follows a scientific degree.

Experience in workshop for the processing of stone in Bisceglie (Puglia)

2001 -  Make experience as an independent artist in various workshops, and confronts the world of sculpture that  revolves around Carrara and Pietrasanta (Toscany), both known art cities.

2002 -  Graduated with honors in sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, with a thesis on the traditional technical hand carving of marble and sculpture there only done by eye.

Grants and Awards

Still young participates and wins numerous provincial and regional design competitions in Puglia

2003 - Received an award at the Professionalism Award of the Rotary Club of Bisceglie, Puglia.

2015 – He is protagonist of a film-documentary on the sculpture in Carrara (Toscany) being implemented by the Polish director Wojteck Pustowa, produced from the Central Institute of Polish film.

Exhibitions

1999 - He moved to Carrara in Tuscany, where he participated in the Biennale in Carrara Academy in Fieri .

2000 - Exhibition "Design Jewelry, Sculpture and Drawings" at the Monastery of Santa Croce di Bisceglie (Ba.).

2001- Participates in Biennial of Carrara in Fieri and various collectives in the province of Massa-Carrara.

2003 - Solo exhibition of sculpture in the Library of Marina di Carrara, organized by the Municipality as part of the review Read the sculpture.

2004 - Solo exhibition of sculpture and drawings at the Municipal Gallery of Bari.

2008 - Personal exibition of sculpture and drawings at Via Monte Napoleone in Milan at Hotel Four Seasons presented by the poet and writer Annalisa Cima.

                        2009 - Partecipates in the Verona Art Fair with the Forni Gallery of Bologna

Commissions

2002-04  - Performs sculptures of medium and large format in marble, terra cotta or bronze for private commissions,
among them the sculptural decoration of a marble monumental fountain at a private park in Sardinia, commissioned by the owner of the IED European Institute of Design
in conjunction with a Design and Architecture studio of Carrara.

The town of Carrara commission and acquired one of his works for the Marble Museum.

2005 - Performs the monumental marble triptych of the Baptism of John Baptist for the inside of the church of the Monastery of St. Clare between Molfetta and Bisceglie.

2007 - The Museum of Silver of Palazzo Pitti in Florence acquired his silver jewel for its permanent collection of contemporary art jewelry in the same year opened.

2011 - He goes to Norway, invited to perform a sculpture in Bergen during a symposium.

2012 - Invited to a Painting symposium in Austevoll, Norway.

20015- He Performs a large sculpture for a park above Massa (Tuscany), dedicated to a reporter disappeared in the mountains

Artistic Development

2009 - Begins a series of voyages in search of new worlds, new perspectives and new perceptions, which will bring him to Turkey, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Portugal.

He start to use the fotographic medium and the video for try to take out the soul of the sculptor, the desire to capture the ghost in what of herself is impalpable ,
making a different opera in which the sculpture become an instrument of partecipation of a creative kind of photographic process, that wont to offer en extract of the same sculpture.

2010 - Experiments with new techniques of the assembly of different materials ( such as old wood brought from the sea, fragments of boats, iron consumed by rust, old fabrics, ropes and etc.etc. )
and carving of marble and wood, even after a journey of several months in South America through Peru and Bolivia.

The interest as it relates his artistic and personal research now is increasingly oriented to the deconstruction of dogmas and superstructure both educational and moralistic,
through dialogue and openness to all that is different to free the mind from the restrictions of imposed cultures , of prejudices, preconceptions, religions,
and all forms of conditioning that would prevent the true and intimate dialogue of each of us with himself, with his own body, with his own feelings, with spirit and intelligence, in search of what we really are and want to become.

A project of a series of themed works comes alive in him, as yet unpublished, to be proposed across the border and not yet finished.

After a period of a few months spent in New York, he move to Brazil to continue its confrontation, as human as stylistic, with different sources of study and inspiration.

Currently after another period of work in Tuscany and some months in Paris, he is about to move to Lisbon in Portugal