Artist to Watch: Discover the Vibrant, Energetic Works of Emerging Artist Marcos Anziani

It was a job as a bellman at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Miami that would be pivotal. “I was there working at the hotel during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach, an experience that introduced me to paintings and an atmosphere that otherwise I wouldn’t have known existed,” he shares. Anziani recalls seeing a specific work by a fellow Dominican artist, Fernando Ureña Rib, that made a huge impression. “This massive oil painting captivated me in a way that I’ve never felt before. At that moment I knew that I had to paint.”

Anziani’s large-scale canvases are filled with energy and dynamism with the strokes jumping from the confines of the canvas. “In my work I like to express universal stories in a personal way or vice versa,” says the artist, who is inspired by a long list of exaulted talents, including Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Picasso, Karel Appel, Jean Dubuffet, and Jean Michel Basquiat. “I’m intrigued by the notion that I’m channeling feelings and emotions directly from the subconscious in a language or dialect that can be interpreted collectively and individually by the reader, almost if turning a non-fiction into a fiction and a fiction into an open concept of possibilities depending on the viewer.”

Color plays a huge role in his works and layering the palette is one of the artist’s favorite parts of the process. “I love to see colors speak with each other,” he says. “As the painting develops, one color requires another for a complete dialogue. Coincidentally, they end up in the location where it would make sense to me according to the story being told, as if they just need me to place them there because they can’t do it themselves.”

Since joining Avant Gallery in 2022, Anziani’s work has appeared in multiple solo and group exhibitions around the world, including locations in Moscow, New York City, and Miami. In early 2023, Anziani participated in his first group museum exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach. Last October, he had his first solo show with Avant Gallery and a presentation at the gallery’s booth at Art Miami. Since then, his momentum has continued to rise.

This year, is work appeared in a group show at the Norton Museum of Art as well as the Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary art fair. In the summer, his paintings were featured at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair as well as the exclusive charity event for Galerie Magazine at the home of Lisa and James Cohen in East Hampton.

The exhibition at Avant Gallery is on view through January 17, 2025.