Biography

A versatile artist who shuns the limelight, Antonio Anastasia was born in Maglie (Lecce) on 15 January 1948 and has lived and worked in Rome since 1969. He has painted since 1960. As a child he had a real, physical contact with colour: he would secretly slip into the workshop of his father Salvatore, a painter and decorator, mixing enamels and temperas to discover their chromatic effects. This innate artistic vein led him naturally to choose the path of art. For him, Art is absolute freedom of thought — imagination, Life itself.

In 1965 he earned his Diploma as a Master of Art at the State Art Institute of Lecce. He moved to Rome, where in 1969 he obtained his Diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts, studying under illustrious artists: Renato Guttuso, Franco Gentilini, Piero Guccione and Mino Maccari.

From 1968 to 1973 he worked with the graphic and advertising studio of Giorgio Benvignati, producing work for Alitalia offices worldwide. From 1974 to 2005 he combined his artistic profession with that of graphic designer at Alitalia's Cartographic Office, designing and executing the aeronautical navigation charts used by pilots. In 1990 he led the ICARUS group, an innovative digital system for computerised cartography that brought new European prestige to the national airline.

From 2009, after the untimely death of his wife Rita, he found solace in his studio and devoted himself almost exclusively, with renewed energy, to his primary artistic vocation. Without ever abandoning his personal PostCubist style, he developed a line of research blending Abstract Expressionism, Futurism, Spatialism and the Informel — first begun on glass back in the 1970s.

After a decade of experimentation he perfected a technique built on the communicative power of pure colour: synthetic enamel, inherited from his father's memory, extremely difficult to control and for that reason used by no one else. He spreads it without brushes, using only a spatula and his fingers, letting the colours flow freely under the guidance of his hand — an immediate, liberating action painting. The result is fantastical imagery — flashes of light, cosmic phenomena, sidereal spaces — often inspired by contemporary, even tragic events, because for him Art is testimony.

From 2018 to 2019 he was part of the MetaFormism movement conceived by Prof. Giulia Sillato, taking part in the 2019 Matera exhibition. His is a constant research, admired by critics and leading professionals such as Vittorio Sgarbi, Achille Bonito Oliva, Daniele Radini Tedeschi, Paolo Levi, Sergio Rossi and Gastone Ranieri Indoni. His works feature on numerous covers and in prestigious publications and Yearbooks of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Anastasia belongs to that élite of artists who manage themselves in the first person, without conditioning or constraints, far from fashion and the market. In 1971 he took part in Alitalia's twenty-fifth-anniversary competition for the issue of a postage stamp; in April 2005 he left the company to devote himself fully to art. For him, painting is constant commitment, reworking and research — an immediate, liberating action painting, free of any virtuosity.

His subjects are a testimony of the contemporary world — nature and the environment, the cosmos, social and geopolitical events, often dramatic — told purely through colour, without images. Those who enter his Roman “gallery-home” are overwhelmed by the rainbow of his palette and the energy radiating from the works that hang and stack in every room. Constantly invited to solo and group shows around the world, his market valuation is set by the coefficient 7.0 established by SEAC in 2018.