Florence 1950 - 2019

ANDREA STELLA a gifted genius born in 1950 in Florence, was of Greek heritage. He resided on alternately periods in two cities that are the most important cradles of humanistic art: Florence and Athens where he studied art, here is where the two cultures combined in the Greek -Byzantine golds and colors and are summarized, with the harmonies of the Italian Renaissance, in fact his long artistic journey in Athens was fundamental by attending artistic and modeling workshops, where it was customary to combine music to the teaching of carving and engravings alternating this frequency with that of the Florentine workshops. He then permanently settled in Florence learning the Renaissance style, working with Florentine masters, perfecting his skills, mastering the use of minerals and all the antique traits. During those first years and at a young age his art career initiated, he created a large wooden bas-relief of the Baptistery of Florence, with the coat of arms of the city, a work that was later placed in the Vatican Museums. Other works from the period he studied in Florence can also be found in Palazzo Pitti, and in some churches of the Romanesque and medieval times in Tuscany. His continuous artistic flair led him to devote himself to those studies, he studied matter so deeply that he managed to obtain extraordinary results from it, making his works unique in their contemporaneity. He became a true alchemist. Stella’s inspired mixed media works, were illuminated through alchemical alterations and the fundamental use of organic material like wood, gold, silver, and copper, utilizing this combination a truly deep connection with the divine and his religious inspiration. Through his works he represented his love for nature and music as he was also a musician which was also integral to this creation, with harmony, he dove into the inner soul of his works. He later retired from the city to live and work in an ancient convent in Bibbiano, Pelago near Florence. A peaceful place, surrounded by silence, vineyards, and lands of the Tuscan countryside, where he meditated, created, and held workshops in the true tradition of Florentine art, sharing his secrets. Here is where the inspiration of his muses were born, strolling through his inner journey of his vision. They gave way to creation giving us the evocative and poetic nature of his figures representing the search of his inner essentiality of the introspective human. Here they reached the most intimate and profound key to art… The voyage of Beauty through la luce Divina, the Divine Light. These called neo-chromatic works gave life to the “new renaissance “pictorial content". During his lifetime Andrea Stella received many prestigious honors and awards, his works were seen and exhibited in major exhibitions such as Galleria degli Uffizi, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Vecchio, the Hermitage Museum and many other throughout his career between the United States and Europe, obtaining critical acclaim worldwide.