Elio Cassarà was born in Mazara del Vallo in 1974. The artist’s painting tends to abstract art, attributable to the intense effects of lights and the expressiveness of color in his narration of landscapes. In his paintings we can see the evolutionary nature of painting, based on the careful observation of the environment which dissolves into a fantastic vision, full of suggestions and imaginative power. After training with some local artists, in 1997 Cassarà lived in Venice where he studied the masters of the twentieth century in greater depth and in particular his attention was captured by Giorgio Morandi’s still-life.
These were the years in which he devoted himself intensely to the study of painting; he was strongly influenced by the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, the symbolism of Marx Klinger and Arnold Böcklin and the ideas of the radical Pre-Raphaelites. In 2001 he moved to Berlin where he lived for many years and hosted several personal exhibitions.

The period spent in Germany and his admiration for Gerhard Richter influenced Cassarà’s work which became more abstract and expressive and it was at this stage that the landscape became the main subject of the artist’s work.
It was an all-round landscape, where the enquiry included deserted areas and urban structures rendered through the maximum expression of abstractionism, in a contamination between color and dream. The composition and colour breakdown were brought as far as exasperating and trespassing the painting itself. The artist’s goal was to create in the viewer a release of sensory emotions capable of involving all the senses.
Cassarà made numerous trips that took him to Sicily, Serbia, Slovenia and Norway and the Sicilian landscape became the central core of his works. Finally, in 2014 he returned to Venice, the city where he currently lives and works.
We can now find his works in public and private collections in Italy and abroad.