Patrizia Cassina is a contemporary artist from Cernobbio. Always possessed of a highly creative flair, she would soon enter the world of fashion, influenced by the long and illustrious textile tradition of Como. Guided by the far-sighted and enterprising Como fashion designer Titta Porta, while still very young she began to devote herself with a growing passion to fabrics, weaving the warp and weft into colour compositions. At the same time that she was working in textiles she was also embarking on a personal pictorial quest, focusing on studies of and the use of colour.
When she was in her early twenties, her career took her from the shores of Lake Como to Paris, specifically to the atelier of Karl Lagerfeld, then the creative director of Chanel, Fendi and Chloè, in Place de la Madeleine. The German stylist’s attention was drawn to her keen eye and talent for researching and studying colour. "I used to spend whole days in the atelier painting small monochrome cardboard squares that Lagerfeld used as samples to choose the colours and intensities for the dyeing of his collections’ fabrics," Patrizia Cassina recounts to us.
From Place de la Madeleine, she moved on to other renowned Italian and international fashion companies, such as Larusmiani and Thierry Mugler, before finally turning to art after being a student of the master Pierantonio Verga at the Aldo Galli Academy in Como. Galvanised by the lively academic environment and influenced by her experience in the textile industry, Patrizia Cassina developed an original visual language with colour experimentation at the forefront. Her research has given rise to abstract works in which colour, filling monochrome planes or geometric shapes, scans rhythms and sequences that alternate in poetic compositions, often centred on varying hues of blue.
Patrizia Cassina currently teaches painting at the Aldo Galli Academy in Como, lives in Cernobbio and has her studio in the former Cartiere Burgo premises in Maslianico. This space is a co-working and creative hub that has over the years been home to the studios of numerous artists, restorers, architects and designers, including the famous painter Giuliano Collina.