About Paolo Andrea Deandrea

I work in publishing and advertising as an illustrator, journalist and cartoonist. From 2015 I started painting a series of subjects in acrylic colors on canvas and wood, "the Mosques", a small crowd of surreal, distorted, funny and somewhat melancholic characters, which take up the style and characters of the American cartoons of the 20s-'30s.

I paint in an attic above the house where I live. I really like it, it's a small, welcoming and intimate environment, where I've been drawing illustrations and comics for more than twenty years. In summer, I often paint in the outdoor garden.

In the illustration and stripes I started in the classic way with inks and liquid watercolors, and then moved on to digital coloring with Photoshop. In the long run, however, digital design, which fits perfectly with editorial production, is a bit frustrating. Nothing tangible remains of your work. That's why a few years ago I started painting on canvas and wood, to return to the pleasure of painting and creating an object that exists in the real world, that you can touch. I use acrylic paints, chalks, crayons, colored pencils, which I then finish with semi-gloss transparent protective paints. I love seeing my work finished and framed. I often use vintage frames that are bought at flea markets or small antique dealers, which I then arrage and paint. I really like to use decorated and golden frames, which create a fun contrast with cartoon subjects. Cartoon is the way of telling that I have always found more natural, pleasant and spontaneous, and the "primitive" ones have a particular charm, a very strong evocative power. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much this perception is shared even by a very young audience, culturally and anagratically very distant from that period. Even in the following decades formidable cartoons were drawn, authentic masterpieces, and it's very true. But those of the 20s and 30s, and the music that accompanied them, have (at least for me) something more. They are not vintage, they are really "ancient": they represent the origins of a world and an era, they are almost mythical archetypes. In the language of comics they correspond to the "far away country" of fairy tales. My current work is halfway between painting and illustration, and draws strong inspiration from the American cartoons of the early decades of the 20th century: Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, the very first Warner and Disney productions. I recognize in those cartoons a strength and a naive and wild spirit that have gradually softened and softened in subsequent productions. Chisy, cheerful, romantic, but also grotesque, violent and cruel.

They speak a childish but unsought-after language, much more authentic and sincere than their more meek and reassuring successors.

Signs, colors, shapes and history are simple and perementory. They move in a very dangerous world, a far west where at every step you can receive a piano in your head, a dynamite candle, be tied up, beaten, cut in two with an axe, blown up. And in the next shot, quietly resume walking whistling. They are funny, simple, grotesque, a little silly; sometimes even disturbing and dramatic, but without taking themselves too seriously and without ever abandoning their stubborn and senseless faith in what the next shot holds.