Beginnings
Matilde Izzia was born in Casale Monferrato on February 10, 1931. The Izzia family originates from near Ragusa, Sicily. The family’s history can be traced back to 1485, during which time they owned large estates in the region and distinguished themselves through numerous prominent figures. A passion for drawing and pictorial composition is not unknown in the family: her grandfather Giuseppe instinctively handled pencil and brush, and her father, Francesco Emanuele, attended art school, refining his innate good taste for figurative expression. Francesco Emanuele Izzia married Caterina Elisabetta Grillo. This union strengthened the family’s artistic vein, which became clearly manifest in Matilde Izzia, as her artistic production would abundantly demonstrate.
 Woman with glasses1979 (cm.65x90) |
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 Concetta1978 (cm.60x90) |
 The Hat1972 (cm.80x90) |
 Lamp and soup bowl1977 (cm.75x80) |
 Woman by the window |
 Woman with wicker basket |
Attending middle school did not prevent her from producing, with rare determination, a substantial portfolio of drawings and her first oil paintings. Moreover, the creative drive that would later fully emerge began to take shape during those years with the writing of the novel L’Esilio (The Exile) and the short story collection Un Mattino (One Morning).
After completing lower secondary school, Matilde Izzia moved to Turin, where she attended the Art High School of the Accademia Albertina. In 1949, she earned her art diploma with a score of 9/10 in the course Drawing Applied to the Natural Sciences, under Professor Tosco, who would later, in 1969, entrust her with the execution of anthropological illustrations for the Encyclopedia of Natural Sciences published by the Istituto Geografico De Agostini.
This experience completed her foundation of knowledge and added a further imprint to her natural ability to interpret the world around her. In 1950, she was invited by Noemi Gabrielli—Superintendent of the Art Galleries of Turin and one of her most esteemed former teachers—to collaborate on the organization of an exhibition at Palazzo Chiablese.
In 1951, she won the public competition to teach drawing in middle schools, and later, in 1966, she passed another state examination that enabled her to teach Art in high schools. Alongside her teaching career in the high school system, she devoted herself with great dedication to her own artistic exploration, guided by the painter Francesco Menzio.
Her body of work is divided into the following three cycles:
1950 – 1960
STUDY of ANCIENT TECHNIQUES
Coloristic explorations of various early 20th-century schools: during this period, she also attends the studio of a talented student of Bistolfi, who guides her toward large-scale symbolic composition. The painter produces busts, portraits, and sketches during this time, but she feels a stronger pull toward color. She prefers to reinterpret pictorial works in a modern key, already revealing a tendency to seek a rhythmic balance between fullness and emptiness, light and space.
1960 – 1970
POST-IMPRESSIONIST and EXPRESSIONIST experiences
There emerges immediately the pursuit of broad, expansive compositions enriched by strong tonal values. What stands out is the artist’s deliberate choice to reintroduce the universal human figure as a central element in her work.
1970 – 1982
Compositional CLARIFICATION via Thematic ABSTRACTION
The figure and the object discover a new space of their own, anchoring themselves within compositional lines that transcend reality. The more refined use of color enhances the expressive power of the drawing, and the work emerges as a distilled essence of fully matured meaning. In 1968, the painter presented herself to critics and the public with her first solo exhibition of 56 paintings, held in Turin at the Galleria d’Arte Fogliato.
The critic P.A. Tibaldeschi writes:
The artist and her ideas
Given that, in its feverish desire to evolve, much of contemporary painting has turned into a “painting of ideas” or a “painting of form”—deviations that lie at the root of many of the regressions and misunderstandings we witness today—we cannot help but pay close attention to those who, between painting and language, still manage to maintain a clear and constructive distance. Such is the case with Matilde Izzia, who does not concern herself with preaching ideas. Rather—just as one expects from a true artist—she uses them as a catalyst for intuition and a stimulus for emotion.
The Artist and the Subtle Forces of Perception
The formal fertility of our time is as striking as it is superficial. Its appeal may be immediate, but just as immediate is its exhaustion—because this so-called fertility depends more on appearance than on essence. It is not sufficiently internalized at its origin, nor is it capable of being deeply internalized by those who experience it.
Matilde Izzia, on the other hand, reminds us that form is a tool of artistic creation, not its goal—just as tone, color, and line are tools. Guided by this conviction, her works free themselves from superficial indulgences, from distractions offered by facile philosophies—whether formal, graphic, or chromatic.
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What we find instead is the constant presence of the artist herself: the genuine persistence of her emotional truth. It is this emotional presence that shapes the dynamic development of her compositions, the chromatic notations, the placement of masses within space.
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On the canvas, Matilde Izzia draws together—simultaneously and seamlessly—content, expressive intuition, technical foundation, and a deep sense of naturalistic abstraction.
Each subject aspires toward universality within the individual and individuality within the universal. And while that may sound like a simple play on words, it is, in truth, one of the great constants of that enduring endeavour we call art.
The Return of Man
In our image-saturated civilization, Man as a subject of representation seems to be torn between the most perverse forms of naturalistic utilitarianism and the most elaborate tendencies of iconoclastic taste.
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Matilde Izzia’s intent, however, is quite different: she seeks to restore Man to his original integritas—his wholeness—as a being of creation. Not a toy, not a philosophical metaphor, not a social or zoological condition, not a “character,” but Man in his full physical presence—stripped of the temptation of symbols and messages, and rendered in his individual-universal essence.
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Under the weight of this profound commitment, the artist re-creates Man.
A re-creation that is joyful precisely because it is free: open to suggestion, constantly renewed through a perceptiveness I would dare to call inexhaustible.
And I say re-creation because each subject is captured in their objective essence—revealed through the catalyzing gaze of a personality capable of stepping away from the arbitrary constraints of existence.
Conclusion
In the work of Matilde Izzia, there is a sense of completeness that can only be explained through the artist’s total identification with the subjects of her experience.
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And because this identification happens humbly—with dedication and without compromise—each painting carries the feeling of a singular discovery, a moment of continuous invention, revealed each time with clarity and expressed without distortion.
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In every single work, we sense that the artist’s original emotion becomes a driving creative force—and that our eyes, effortlessly, are able to recognize and comprehend the feeling contained within these representations.
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Whether we call it “validity” or “meaning” doesn’t matter—
this is what art has always given us,
and what we continue to ask of it.
