The Krefeld based artist Patrizia Casagranda creates expressive symbioses involving elements of collage, painting, stencil technique, street art and typography. Her motifs are usually designed as thematically homogeneous series of paintings In a time of increasing digitalisation, which also does not stop at art, Casagranda consciously emphasizes an experiencable materiality in her creations. On plywood panels, recycled army tents or truck tarpaulins, she creates relief-like, jagged surfaces of waves, furrows, mortar and nubs. Casagranda works with the principle of collage as well as with its opposite, the décollage: she flames the upper layer of corrugated cardboard to reveal the wave profile. She covers fabric with paper, applies graffiti-style writing. An essential element was the dot grid, which was applied from a mixture of mortar and plaster which was later covered with paint. These dots are reminiscent of the works of Roy Lichtenstein and Sigmar Polke. Except that in Casagranda's paintings these emerge three-dimensionally. Her compositions may have up to 15 layers and a fascinating depth effect. From up close, the work seems hardly more than an abstract relief. But when we take just a few steps back, the single fragments join together and the sea of dots manifests itself as an expressive woman's portrait. On the one hand, Casagranda likes to work with well-known faces of our media world - models, activists or actresses, as in the painting "White Belief II", which shows the American actress Jennifer Lawrence, who stands as a role model for an emancipated and strong woman. But also unknown women from Casagranda's direct surroundings appear as motifs, as well as for us the young, unnamed Indian women of the Kalbelia caste, who collect rubbish for a living in the slums of New Delhi. During one of her yearly visits to India, the artist became friends with these young women who deeply impressed her by their unbroken optimism and joie de vivre, which inspired her to create the series "Belief".
Public faces or unknown individuals - it is the warmth of their universal female radiance with which Casagranda emphasises the unifying and common values of love and peace in the world religions of Buddhism, Shinto, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and - in the case of "White Belief II" - Christianity. Therefore, every painting of the series has the word "Belief" in its title, only the colors and textures are changing in detail. Transferred to the religious question, each painting carries a humanistic message which points out that individual religious faith has many faces, shapes and nuances, while the language of love and peacefulness always remains the same.
The German-Italian artist Patrizia Casagranda (* 1979, Krefeld, Germany) graduated with distinction in 2002 after studying at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences before attending academies of art in Nice, Ravensburg and Trier. She has been working as a graphic designer (for Günther Uecker and Markus Lüpertz, among others) for several years until 2015, when she began working as a freelance artist in Germany, the Netherlands and India. Thanks to her unique style, she was able to achieve considerable success in the international art scene after a short time.