Gracen Steinepreis

Surrealist Artists

Maurizio Anzeri’s:

Anzeri’s media includes the ‘craft-art’ of embroidery and found vintage photographs from car boot sales and flea markets.
His embroidered piece “Boo” details an anglo-saxon, westernized male in a suit. The piece has been further manipulated by an embroidered ghostly mask that vail’s the males face.
The piece encourages viewers to responded with sorrow, sombre and depressed emotions. It is through the element of colour and the theme of black and white that privileges these sentiments. We also respond negatively to the lack of identity that is revealed under the ghostly mask of the embroidery.The mysterious mask that vail’s the mans features, encourages viewers to question the story of the man that is secretively hidden behind the sheer lines of the stitching. The figure of the piece shares a story that has been manipulated from reality, which has created confusement and encouraged a surreal response.
Anzeri had studied and grown up in a western European society. Visibly we see the link between Anzeri’s life and the figure beneath the mask. A western european man is the correlation between the subject matter and the artists cultural influence.
We can also see an influence of technology and increasing prevalence of photography. Photography as an art has become a major form of expression in the twenty first century, and is visible influence and reference of culture within his art.
“I am interested in the relation between intimacy and the outer world... the intimate human action of embroidery is a ritual of making and re-shaping stories and history of these people”. Anzeri quotes that the action of embroidery humanizes his subject matter and creates a life after these characters have passed from this reality. 
Predominately The idea of surrealism is strongly evident in Anzeri’s piece, it presents a contrast between our reality, being the photograph, and our imagination, being the man manipulated embroidery.
Anzeri is an artist who lives on the edge through the originality and inventive style of his work. He stands alone challenging the conventions of contemporary art.