Adelina Zandrino Biography
Adelina Zandrino (Genoa, 19 September 1893 – Genoa, 1994) was an Italian painter and illustrator. Having discovered his vocation for art at a very young age, he studied for a few months with the masters Federico Maragliano and Giuseppe Pennasilico. Showing an excellent aptitude in landscape, portrait and still life, she was soon able to make her debut in 1913 at the International Exhibition of Women's Art, held in Turin, where she was immediately noticed. Strengthened by his ease of composition and skilful use of colour, from the beginning of his career he worked simultaneously both in book illustration, commercial graphics, room decoration and easel painting. In 1913 she held her first solo exhibition in Rapallo, and then went to Paris in the company of her journalist and theater critic father, establishing herself as a theater costume designer and book designer. In Paris he met Auguste Rodin, Robert de Montesquiou, as well as Gabriele D'Annunzio, who had just presented to the public his Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, set to music by Claude Debussy. Returning to Italy, during the First World War she created patriotic postcards and posters. In 1917 he created the series of postcards with masks, the series with the woman and the beast of symbolist taste. Starting from the 1920s he dedicated himself to ceramics, collaborating with Manlio Trucco's Casa dell'Arte, with whom in 1922 he exhibited some painted plates with costume or mask genre scenes at the Genoese Promotrice Exhibition. He also made numerous other ceramic objects, plates, candlesticks, mugs, albarelli, splashbacks, lampshades, characterized by a strong chromatic liveliness, perhaps reminiscent of his Parisian experiences, in particular of the Ballets Russes. He also created small-format sculptures, generally female figures, inspired by Decadentism and the Belle Époque. In the 1930s he created small terracotta sculptures, produced in the Fornace Tonet of Genoa Sturla and generally cold coloured, which have as their subject maternity or the female condition. In 1930 she exhibited some of her works at the First Women's Art and Work Exhibition, which took place in Milan at the Castello Sforzesco, also creating the poster for the Exhibition. In 1932 he held an important personal exhibition in Genoa in which, in addition to ceramics and terracottas, more than seventy pictorial works were exhibited. In 1936 he took part in the Milan Triennale and in 1937 in the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. In 1944 and 1946 he held personal exhibitions at the Ranzini Gallery in Milan. In 1950 he was present at the International Exhibition of Sacred Art in Rome, where he exhibited the painting Concert of Angels (1939). Also for the Holy Year 1950 he created a series of twelve postcards with allegories with Christological motifs and Pope Pius XII. From the 1950s until his death, the subjects depicted were mainly religious with sweet Madonnas, little angels and children, which were reproduced in series for holy cards and greeting cards. The canvas depicting Sister Maria Repetto next to the statue of Saint Joseph venerated by her (1968), preserved in the Refectory of the Convent of the Brignoline Sisters in Genoa, is interesting.
