ㅤ
I believe in an anti-illusionistic kind of painting, humble, linked to the material quality of the painting-object. My canvases feature overt lyricism, decorative and symbolic devices used in votive painting, classical references, subjects taken from the world of toys or from the epics. I identify my works in the color pink. Be it scarce, sumptuous, burnt, pearly, icy, childlike or sepulchral, each painting has its own pink, which by referencing different moments in the history of art, activates atmospheres that are from time to time welcoming or stern.
Sofia Silva (Padova, Italy, 1990) lives and works in Padova. She studied at the University IUAV of Venice, graduating in 2012, and later pursued studies in the history of arts and the conservation of artistic heritage at the University Ca' Foscari. Her painting practice is consistently rooted in a feminine, ephemeral, tender, and painful imaginary. Silva's distinctiveness in the contemporary painting landscape lies in her integration of intimate and personal objects and subjects within the language of analytical painting. The absolute, non-referential, and medium-specific analytic grammar, in which Silva anchors her research, is nuanced by details that hint at biographical and generational data. Alongside her artistic practice, Silva has been writing art-related texts for ten years, published in magazines and catalogues of institutions including La Quadriennale di Roma, Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
Palazzo Pignano is set between the Adda and Serio rivers. With its 3,812 inhabitants, it stands on an important agricultural site whose origins run back to proto-Romanesque times.
Archaeological excavations have revealed the presence of an inhabited centre as early as the 5th century A.D., whose flourishing activities were performed around a circular-plan Palatine temple and civil buildings including a “palatium,” from which the village's name is derived. Owned by Piniano of the gens Valeria and his wife Melania, the first evangelisers of the countryside around Crema, Palazzo Pignano's first mention in historical documents dates back to the year 1000 A.D. It saw two major destructions, in 951 A.D. and in the 11th century, during the clashes between Milan and Pavia. The parish church, with its Romanesque forms, is almost a thousand years old, and it was the scene of the events of Lombard lordships throughout the Middle Ages.
The vast archaeological area also includes the adjoining “antiquarium,” a small archaeological museum where finds from the excavations, including fragments of glass, flooring materials and other objects, are preserved.
Rural traditions can be seen in a series of historic constructions: Cascine Gandini, Cascine Capri and Ortensie and Casine Sparse distinctive for their portico layout and therefore described as “Porticate”, and set amidst streams, supplied by many springs and groundwater pools, phenomena that have determined the area's vocation for agriculture.