Born on April 19, 1926 in the Tuscan city of Carrara, famous for producing the marble used in Michelangelo’s David and Pieta, Passani completed his studies at the city’s Academy of Fine Art before going on to finish at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Even as a student, Passani’s precocity was evident and he was offered a solo exhibition at the Gallery of Moderner Art, Ungarnasse, in Vienna at the age of 23.
In fact, Vienna has always held Passani close to its heart. As a young man, Passani studied watercolor in Austria’s capital, where he immersed himself in the rich artistic culture, meeting local artists and hobnobbing with the city’s intellectuals, who appreciated his art. Passani remains held in such high regard by Austrian critics that decades later the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna preserves several of his works in its rooms.
In 1950 Passani was commissioned to paint a series of frescoes depicting the life of Saint Francis in the vestry of the Chiesa delle Grazie di Carrara that were widely admired in Roman ecclesiastical circles. and in 1956 Passani was offered a professorship at the Lycée Artistico in the port city of La Spezia in Liguria, a position he retained for 30 years.
Passani’s work began in a strong figurative style which some have likened to the works of the Italian painter Lorenzo Viani, but unlike Viani, Passani’s subjects seem oriented always towards hope. There are naturally exceptions. Passani’s experiences during the war left indelible scars that one catches glimpses of throughout his work. In the 1950s and 1960s his subjects become less sharply drawn, their outlines giving way increasingly to pure emotion. This in turn expressed itself with ever greater intensity of color, until the color itself becomes the primary subject. In the early 1970s, the expanding proliferation of magazines of every type inspired Passani to begin working in collage, shaping the fragments of paper into a harmonious expression of his unconscious.
In the 1980s, without abandoning his connection with collage, he returned to the palette of his 1960s work, but with a more fluid brush stroke and references to a more recent past. In 1986, at the age of 60, he gave up teaching in order to dedicate himself entirely to art, a move that gave rise to some melancholy, seen in his work towards the end of the 1980s.
Yet, freed from the time constraints of teaching, Passani’s work in the 1990s reflected a renewed energy, creativity and experimentation, expressing itself in new movements and gestures. During this period his maturity deepened and he discovered a confidence that led to some of his greatest masterpieces.
