Lecture: Painter in the Wind, Eyes in Colors

Renowned Italian Artist, Franco Azzinari will share his insights from his artistic training and career in a conversation with guest moderator URI Professor Michelangelo La Luna.  Azzinari will also present paintings and pictures from his projects, including a 35-years long project that aims at protecting the children of Amazonia’s Indigenous tribes in a critical moment in which the climate change and the uncontrolled “invisible” deforestation of the rain-forest are destroying the most important ecosystem of our planet.

Franco Azzinari was born in San Demetrio Corone, in the province of Cosenza, on March 3, 1949. After the death of his parents, at the age of fourteen, he left Calabria and started a real journey of personal growth across Europe. For several years he lived in Paris, where the great Impressionist painters, particularly Gauguin, Van Gogh and Monet, fascinated him. In 1974, in Lerici (La Spezia) he had his first solo exhibition, and in the same year, he opened in Milan a studio-gallery. In 1977 he began a series of trips to the Far East in search of the footsteps of ancient Asian civilizations. He continued his travel experiences in the United States, in the Seychelles Islands, and in Brazil.

Since 1989, Azzinari worked on the project Eyes in Colors, dedicated to the children of the Indigenous tribes of the Amazon, to whom he taught how to express themselves by drawing and painting their beautiful rain-forest. Azzinari also brought them as a gift pencils, brushes, water and oil colors, and sketchbooks, so that they could continue to paint after he left. The goal of the project, endorsed by UNICEF-Italy and presented by Azzinari to Pope Francis in a private meeting they had at the Vatican in October 2019, is to protect the rain-forest and its endangered population and to launch a message on the climate change and the deforestation of Amazonia.

(Franco Assinari will also talk at the South County Art Association on October 17.)

Note: All lectures in the lecture series hosted by the Dante Society of Westerly are live events only and are not recorded. They are neither streamed online nor available afterwards as recordings.

Lectures are free and open to the public.