WHO I AM
Zeno Da Verona, was born in  Sondrio on 6th January  1957.
He moves with his family to Padua in  1963 and since he was a child he shows a particular drawing aptitude. After  a Degree in Forest Sciences the fire of the artistic passion, smoldered under the ashes of life for a long time, burns up more impetuous than ever, and the wannabe artist decides to enroll in the drawing and painting courses of the Private School Mantegna in Padua and of the Institute for Art and Restoration  in Florence,  as well as he attends engraving classes at the  International School of Graphic Design  in Venice. After having moved to Verona Zeno attends drawing and painting free courses,at the

Cignaroli Academy and spaces them out with a year of sculpture legal course and in summer he attends a course of watercolour and a course of drawing and lithography  in Venice. In this phase his research of a personal pictorial style and his passion for the very loved  Vincent mainly  influences his impressionism and pushes him to paint often en pleinair. Unluckily his attempt to earn enough money with art  to live fails and so he chooses  to teach Sciences  at high school. In the meanwhile he also  enrolls in some  icon painting summer courses, with whom he improves his knowledge of raw material even more. In the fall of 1998 he attends a tango course, a passion that will overwhelm him for four years and that will result in the creation of a book, published in 2006, entitled “ Memorie di un tanguero – Gioie (poche) e dolori (molti) del tango” (Memories of a tango dancer- joys (few) and pains (a lot) of tango):  the first multimedia, multilingual and interactive book in the worldwide literature history – thanks to his drawings and musical  parentheses invention. Passed, for health reasons, to teach part-time and thanks to a  sabbatical year he finds time to devote his energies to the only true love of his life. Also the attendance of  Gabrio Pojana painter’s courses in Verona about the reproduction of copies of the works of the painters he considers his real teachers: Caravaggio, Leonardo, Vermeer, Rembrandt and

few others  is determining for this backdraught. Of paramount importance has been having to deal with the painting by Vermeer called ” The girl with a pearl  earring” for a number of years, which he started while attending one of these courses, but then went on working on in successive  stages, after a gap of several years, in the solitude of his studio. Confronting the above painting for so many years led our painter to dramatically  improve his skills in oil painting, developing a deeper  love for female portraits. Besides, crucial in this phase were his three short stays in his beloved Rome, the most beautiful art city in the world.
Anyway, his preparation is above all the outcome of a personal study and a self-taught experimentation, since no teacher, no matter how clever he or she may be, can avoid the
self imposed commitment  of spending, at times, 20 hours a day at his trestle.
Now he works as librarian  in a high school in Verona. His other great passions are cinema, dance and music, that fuel his desire of a multimedia art; also for this reason ice skating is his favourite sport, especially dance skating , where he sees the dialogue with space fulfilled. This leads him to paint a series of still lifes where traditional space, defined by tables, tablecloths, walls and other, is gradually replaced  from Universe’s deep space. It’s the Still Life Evolution series, with the final landing place of Lost in Space.
EXHIBITIONS
The artist took part in the xxv event of Padua Art, an exhibition and shop of modern and contemporary art which took place from 14th to 17th November 2014 during the  Padua  fair.
He exhibited 4 works namely NAKED DANCER, A MY AND BILLIE, LOST IN SPACE, THE BIG APPLE AFTER 9/11 ( which,incidentally, can be seen at the website www.zenodaverona.it).

LOST IN SPACE can be seen  in the catalog ARTE PADOVA.
Some time later, in February, two more of his oil  paintings, presenting two nudes, “FORBIDDEN FRUIT IN SLEEP” and “BLESSED IS THE FRUIT OF THY WOMB”, were exhibited at the
MILANO ART GALLERY in the collective  exhibition INTERNATIONAL  ART  EXPO with a review
by  Elena Gollini. The above paintings can be seen on the above mentioned website in the exhibition THE BETTER HALF and in the catalogue INTERNATIONAL ART EXPO.
Furthermore, the oil painting WHO IS SINGING WITH ME? AMY AND BILLIE went on display quite successfully in THE CRYPT GALLERY, in the heart of London during the international exhibition WE ARE IN ART, also showing in the related catalogue.
The three paintings NAKED DANCER, LOST IN SPACE, AMY AND BILLIE  were also exhibited at RomArt, the art and culture biennale, from 15th to 18th May 2015 during the Rome Fair.
The NAKED DANCER appears in the RomArt catalog as well.
The same three paintings were also exhibited in the Farini Gallery in the prestigious Palace Fantuzzi in Bologna from 12th to  27th September  2015 at the event “Arte a Palazzo”, on the first anniversary of a contemporary art project. The reproduction of the three paintings can be admired in the high quality and prestigious catalog, which is one of the top book among the documents dealing with  contemporary art reviews, thanks also to the contribution of Azzurra Immediato, a authoritative art historian who wrote a review on the three paintings.
Later on, thanks to the artist’s executive skills in his artistic research, Zeno da Verona was asked to exhibit NAKED DANCER and AMIE AND BILLIE at the third exhibition of BERLINO IN ARTE, an international exhibition of contemporary art which took place  from 26th to 31st January  2016 in the art gallery August35, right in the heart of Berlin in the so called “art galleries street”.
Furthermore, on the occasion of PassepARTout Unconventional Gallery from 19th December
to  31st January 2016  the two nudes BLESSED IS THE FRUIT… and FORBIDDEN FRUIT IN SLEEP were exhibited  in the prestigious rooms of Ata Hotel EXPO FIERA Milano-Pero connected to Exhibition of Contemporary Art Accessible MerryChristmART.

ZENO DA VERONA
Mobile: 3475192565
e-mail: benhur57@libero.it
Website: www.zenodaverona.it
zeno verlato facebook