Lydia Lorenzi, "Angel", oil and gold leaf on canvas, 150x105 cm, 1999

Educated painter, Lydia Lorenzi carves each of her work in a precise historical and aesthetic context to achieve results that have the taste of the "unique". This is what happens in "Angel", a painting that solves with artistic vehemence the old discussion about the sex of angels. According to Lorenzi, they are females described in spiritual concentration. The painting induces other reflections: the perfect sense of anatomy; the high symbolic content of the figure that, crouching in the darkness of the human things, raises her arms to the sky in a silent prayer that obtains grace in Heaven, as evidenced by the clearing of the background; the face detected on a byzantine heavenly gold; the short and brown hair, contrary to every iconological tradition, here justified as the angel is still immersed in an earthly dimension. The color of the dress is noteworthy, a purple that marks the transition between the darkness of the earth and the light of Divine Grace.

September 2014
Prof. Aldo Maria Pero

Lydia Lorenzi, “Angel Wings", sculpture in cobalt blue and white Plexiglas, 88x50x18 cm, 2012

"Angel Wings" by Lydia Lorenzi offers an updated version on the subject of the wings of angelic creatures: we are not presented here with the bright and colorful plumage of Giotto or Fra Angelico, but with a linear and trenchant solution that seems to refer to Lucio Fontana’s sharp "cuts". The ancient examples were rich with different colours. The monochromy of Lorenzi is equally vibrant. In this case she chooses a color dear to her, cobalt blue, in a gradation of absolute enchantment. The wings are proposed with the synthetic and attractive appearance of a violin, an instrument that is well suited to the angels, whose historical iconography often represents them as musicians and almost always while they derive melodies from stringed instruments, which from the seventeenth century onwards are normally violins. This is a work of exemplary sobriety, capable of creating charms with its dual and mutual metaphor.

Lydia Lorenzi, " Shadows Breeding ", oil and gold leaf on canvas, 145x105 cm, 1991

"Breeding of Shadows" by Lydia Lorenzi confirms the depth of her expressive characteristics, which move with panache on various stylistic levels. It seems indeed that, rather than forcing the inventive material with the rigidity of a predetermined manner, she chooses each time the best way to give plastic or pictorial form to her communication needs. It is not a gelid attitude, but logic, a logic that imposes its own reasons without being coercive. Lorenzi always shows to know perfectly what results she wants to achieve. In this sense, the shadows are not being bred, but created or received from the outside, because they are actually ideas, thoughts, reflections. On the obscure background on the right, stands in fact the clear path of a mind that seeks its own way without neglecting the other suggestions.

November 2014
Prof. Aldo Maria Pero