Early influences

Family History and Lissone hometown

#Attitude #MatericSense #NaturalEssences

#Attitude

#MatericSense

#NaturalEssences

The youngest of six children, he begins to take an interest in painting as an expressive need at a very young age. Favoring an innate predisposition to visual arts are the context and family history, and the artistic fervor of his hometown Lissone in the early 1960s.

Great-grandfather Ignazio Dassi, a professor awarded the drawing chair at the Salesian Institute of Milan, was among the founders of the Evening school of drawing and engraving and general director of the Paleari Furniture Factory in Lissone, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was an active promoter of aesthetic culture applied to furniture in the Brianza area.

His father Giuseppe, an artisan among the promoters of the Palazzo del Mobile in Lissone and the local section of the Artisans' Union, won the first prize at the 8th Lissonese Furniture Week with the project Camera Rossa/Red Room. He accompanied him annually to the historic editions of the Lissone Prize (1946-1967), an international award dedicated to painting, allowing him to establish a first contact with the artistic trends of those years.

From a very young age, he loves to explore the family's woodworking lab. A place that stimulates his tactile and olfactory sensitivity and a particular interest in essences and natural materials, elements that will later emerge in his works.

In 1975, he takes over his father's furniture business, along with his brothers Silvano and Domenico, and the lab becomes an incubator of his artistic traces.

Mariangelo Cazzaniga and Alice Cazzaniga, at Laboratorio Fratelli Cazzaniga, 2016. Video Courtesy by Artist Han Bing 韩冰

Mariangelo Cazzaniga, Pà Giusep, 1975, mixed media on hardboard, at Laboratorio Cazzaniga Arredamenti. Early Works series.

Mariangelo Cazzaniga, Laboratorio Cazzaniga Arredamenti, 2023. In the background: wall drawings, 1970.

Historical Background and Reference Texts
with the coordination of Piergiorgio Cazzaniga

The interior design project Camera Rossa/Red Room by Giuseppe and Pietro Cazzaniga, presented in 1955 at the 8th Lissonese Furniture Week, is an early material experimentation project in which some critics had seen references to contemporary art Who would dare to question the affinity of taste that reconnects the most recent experiences of figurative art with the red room exhibited at the Furniture Exhibition?

Alberto Zanchetta, Promemoria del Premio Lissone, Catalogue, 2017, Lissone Museum of Contemporary Art, p. 60.

The Evening school of drawing and engraving was founded in Lissone in 1878. Considered a happy exception in the panorama of Brianza, in 1900, the School won the bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris and, in 1906, the gold medal at the International Exhibition in Milan.

Daniele Pozzi, Lissone: una comunità di mobilieri (1880-1970) in "STORIA IN LOMBARDIA" 1/2010, pp 78-112, DOI: 10.3280/SIL2010-001003, quote p. 85.

Renzo Perego, Lissone nella Storia del Mobile, 2014, pp. 8,9.

Il Meroni è Mobile, 50 anni tra Lissone Italia Europa, 2018, curated by Felice Bonalumi, 2018, p. 20.

The cultural association Famiglia Artistica Lissonese, founded in 1934 in Lissone, was among the promoters of two significant local annual events: the first Lissonese Furniture Week, in 1936 and the Lissone Prize dedicated to painting, in 1946.

Renzo Perego, Lissone nella Storia del Mobile, 2014, pp. 13-16.

Daniele Pozzi, Lissone: una comunità di mobilieri (1880-1970) in "STORIA IN LOMBARDIA" 1/2010, pp 78-112, DOI: 10.3280/SIL2010-001003, pp. 91/92.