Alice Zanin: Italian contemporary sculptor
Discover the poetic and surreal world of papier-mâché sculptures by Alice Zanin, an Italian artist who has made this lightweight and versatile material the core of her artistic research. Self-taught by background, after experimenting with different expressive languages, since 2012 she has chosen to focus almost exclusively on papier-mâché, a technique that offers her absolute creative freedom.
Her most recognizable works are refined animal sculptures, suspended between reality and imagination, characterized by an extreme sense of lightness and a stylized physicality, reduced to its essence and almost reaching the dissolution of the self. Over time, the artist has refined her technique by removing the printed text of newspapers—a distinctive element of her early production—to achieve lighter surfaces, created through delicate chromatic harmonies and epidermal plays of color.
The art of Alice Zanin
The art of Alice Zanin is based on a subtle balance between formal precision and an oneiric dimension. While remaining fully sculptural, her works increasingly move toward the installational realm, especially in exhibition contexts.
She creates visual dialogues between artworks and objects, built on incongruity, associations of ideas, and unexpected juxtapositions. Papier-mâché thus becomes a sophisticated medium capable of evoking fragility, transformation, and lightness, while achieving meticulous and highly refined results.
Who is Alice Zanin
Born in Piacenza in 1987, Alice Zanin lives and works in the province of Piacenza, Italy. Throughout her career she has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions and has participated in major national art fairs.
Among her most significant solo exhibitions are:
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Uccellacci & Uccellini. From Darwin to Pasolini, Palazzo della Regione, Bologna (2018)
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Animali Incartati, Triennale di Milano (2017)
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The Great Hippocampus Question, Palazzo della Permanente, Milan (2016)
In 2018, she was selected by Exibart magazine among the 222 emerging artists to invest in. She has been a finalist in several prestigious international competitions, including the Arteam Cup (2016) and the Combat Prize (2014).
In 2013, 2015, and 2022, some of her works were exhibited at Art Stays, the International Contemporary Art Festival held annually in Ptuj, Slovenia. Her works are now part of private collections in Italy, Austria, Belgium, the United States, Canada, and Venezuela.
