Alessia Colacicco’s paintings plumb the dark unconscious, with wide-eyed, almost whimsical heroines acting out scenarios of societal rebellion. In earlier works, Colacicco’s marks are more spontaneous and erratic, with almost morbid stick-like figures jolting with energy against color fields of viscous blue, yellow, and red paint – such as with La morte dei conigli bianchi, which features four female figures with red lines pooling from their eyes, blood-like, or with Palloncino blu, in which a well-endowed, corpse-like femme fatale brandishes a clenched fist.
Later works are marked by more refined and detailed figures, though the subject matter remains largely the same. In Brava Guiseppina, Brava, the artist’s archetypal teenage figure urinates into a bucket, and with Ne pas d’acheter de la drogue mais un sac chanel, three girls, perhaps sisters, sit in a bath of urine together. In another, Figarooo, scissors are held to a leg, as if cutting off fresh leg hair. Surrounded by a brash field of red color, the girl’s eyes look as if they’re upside down, the contours of her face simply a caricature of one – a physical attribute shared by all of the women featured prominently in Colacicco’s works. In all of these canvases, which were made between 2008 and 2010, the female figure is rendered perverse and frighteningly pubescent, playing with stereotypes of femininity and good taste.
Born in Foggia, Italy, Colacicco became a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Foggia after receiving her Painting and Decoration degree there; she remains in the city to this day, maintaining a studio in the historic district, where she still creates her paintings.