INTERVIEW WITH ALESSANDRA MATTANZA

As a kid, I was always drawing and painting, playing with colors, and playing with words later, as soon as I started to be able to write. Colors have always fascinated me, as have big photos of animals and people, portraits, and landscapes with meaning. Also, shadows and the games of light in the sky, on the walls, and the streets have fascinated me, such as the shape of figures and the eyes of people and animals.

I was a very introverted kid, an only child. I was very good at school, as I loved reading books, was very curious, and wanted to know things. However, I stuttered and was bullied because I was too shy. I could not express my feelings or feel comfortable around the other kids. 

My best friends were pets such as cats, dogs, and canaries, which my uncle used to breed, and horses, which a family friend used to have. And I had been a movie buff since I was a kid. My mother, an accountant with a passion for the arts, was very liberal, and she gave me free access to all the TV and the books I wanted… My father was a very good painter, but he decided to take a job in a bank, as my parents were quite poor but very much in love and needed money.

I loved old American movies from the 60s, actors such as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle, Elizabeth Taylor in The Last Time I Saw Paris, Giant and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Jane Fonda in Sunday in New York or Barefoot in the Park, Natalie Wood in This Property Is Condemned, and Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro or The Sun Also Rises were in my dreams, as I was already hoping to leave the Italian countryside and go to New York, Los Angeles or, even, San Francisco. These women seemed so free, independent, wild, and so beautiful… 

Growing up in a small town in the Italian countryside, these beautiful women were like heroes to me. But some of my other heroes included writers and poets such as Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Herman Hesse, Goethe, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Cechov, and Henry James. They inspired me with their stories and extraordinary lives. 

My love story with the arts began with writing when I was eight to ten. It became a need, as only through words could I be myself and express myself. I was also fascinated by photography. I remember mainly taking photos of trees or nature and became a professional photographer and painter in my twenties.

In the Franciacorta area of Northern Italy, where I came from, people were mostly entrepreneurs, and making money was a priority there, so I was not taken seriously when I talked about becoming an artist or a writer. I began working as a journalist as it was the only way to earn a living writing. Eventually, I loved journalism, particularly the research and investigating process. I was not wealthy and needed to be paid for my work. 

However, creating art has never been about money. Art was my life, the blood running through my veins. I could not survive without my art, even without being paid.

But I also needed a job to survive. The sacrifices I have made to do this job have been incredible, from not having much money, sometimes not enough to eat, to giving up having a child or family, as I was traveling too much to earn enough to support myself and create my art.

Growing up as a woman in the ’80s and ’90s was challenging in a male-dominated society where it was still expected that women had to give up their jobs, marry, and have kids. I was also in Italy, far from the ideal society I saw in American movies.