Biography

Alessandro Marziale 1990Alessandro Marziale was born in Rome 2 September 1954. His mother Giselle Pons was half Georgian and half French, while his father, Fausto Marziale was Roman. Marziale attended the French Lycée Chateaubriand in Rome and received his scientific high school diploma from the Liceo Scientifico Ottorino Respighi in Rome. From earliest childhood, Alessandro showed vivid interest in all forms of art, from painting to music, thanks also to the influence of his maternal grandmother, the famous New York costumer and designer Helene Pons (link www.helene.pons.com), but perhaps it was his encounter with French doctor-sculptor Yves Grange that induced him to enroll in Pericle Fazzini’s course of sculpture at the Rome Academy of Fine Arts. After one year, he transferred to the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts where he received his degree in sculpture and engraving. During this period he exhibited his work in Urbino, Venice and Ivrea.

In 1977 after his degree, he traveled to Egypt and India with his first wife, Susanna Bassi and their one-year-old child Blu Abraxas. In India Marziale created a series of ink drawings and water colors on the theme of the Indian Ocean. When he returned to Rome he began a period of intense creativity : from engraving to sculptures in wrought iron and lodging forms made of tender stone pine within enameled steel plates which were exhibited in 1980 at the Galleria Provieri in Piazza del Popolo, Rome.

IN 1981 he began investigating various painting techniques while working in the theatre as a ‘participating’ scenic designer, taking part in a Cosimo CInieri’s production entitled Cherchez la famm…, where he drew and painted on stage, as he explained:

“… towards ‘resolutions’, through drawing on stage during Cosimo’s reading of erotic poetry, where each different resolution is stimulated by the text, where the different emotional conditions and the reactions of the public are the protagonists as well as the humours of the cast and their action. The drawings are the most direct interpretative medium, where image and collective imagination finally assume a form and there no longer exists a barrier between the will to represent and the reality that is represented.”

Marziale then went on a research trip to Mexico, where he continued painting and sculpting.

There was always a sense of urgency in everything he ever did, as if in some way he had foreseen his early demise. He had a fascinating, magnetic personality, especially for women, but he was also extremely close to his sons and deeply attached to his family. There is a delightful painting he had created together with his second son Lupo when he was only four years old. He was by nature a nomad, even though family commitments and the need to earn in order to support them forced him to lead a more regular life during the last years of his life.

He was only 37 when he died in a road accident 1 February 1990. He leaves two sons, Blu and Lupo Marziale.