Paola Savoia
The Sacred Print is proud to represent Paola Maria Savoia. Paola was born in Genoa (Italy) on July 29 th 1960 and directly descends from the illegitimate branch of the noble and ancient Savoia family, which used to be the former Royal Family of Italy (until 1946).Since the age of nine she clearly shows her love for arts, starting to paint, and attracting the attention of some important critics. She makes her first art exhibition at the age of 10, thanks to the help of the Ufficio del Turismo della Liguria.
Paola attends the High Schools and then the Institute of fine Arts in Genoa, letting her artistic passion grow and lead her through a path made of prizes and achievements she constantly receives (Premio Città di Mare, Camera di Commercio, Manifestazione Prà‐Lido, Premio Città di Pegli). At the age of 16 she starts her first Fashion School in Genoa and, after only seven years, she owns and manages over 30 Fashion Schools all over Italy with the brand EsseModa Group and three Fashion Schools in the world (Morocco, Japan, Korea). Next to her great success as an enterpreneur she always cultivates her everlasting passion for arts, painting landscapes and natural views of some breathtaking places of Italy.
In 1999 she spends her New Years Eve in a Christian‐Buddist monastry and she approaches the amazing beauty of the Byzantine ancient art.
After the birth of her daughter Elisa, she gets closer to her most religious inner inspiration starting to paint Byzantine and greek icons inspired to the classic ortodox‐christian tradition. Through the years, she studies the tecniques with which the ancient monks used to realize their unbelievable crafts (egg tempera colors, golden leaf, shape proprtions, etc…) and she refines her talent recreating old masterpieces. She holds exhibitions in Milan (Circolo della Stampa), Venezia, Rome (Centro Culturale degli Studi el Comune VeReligiosi), Camaiore (Palazzo dcchio) always being acclaimed and appreciated by the critics and the audience as well.
In 2005 she becomes friend of Vittorio Zemi, a reknowned italian master of icon paintings, and she patiently learns from him how to work the natural colors upon an ancient piece of wood smoothed with white stucco. In 2007 Paola begins to leave the classic way of realizing icons to move towards a more personal and innovative style: using also the classic canvas and giving a metaphisical touch to her subjects, projecting all her pictures in a timeless, spiritual zone of the soul. Today she reprents a mature and totally unique way to create icons, achieving the goal to embody in a simple, essential method of painting religious art history from the Byzantines to our modern times.