Paolo Ferluga - Ashtaroth

Small votive statuette representing Ashtaroth, Phoenician goddess of fertility, love, sexuality, and war.

I am Paolo Ferluga, an Italian artist born in Trieste in 1967, living and working in Trieste. After attending the first year of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, I earned a degree in architecture in 1994.

I soon abandoned the profession of architect to dedicate myself entirely to painting.

Until 2024 I painted mainly urban landscapes, which in 2003 allowed me to participate as a representative of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region at the Vernice - Sentieri della giovane pittura italiana exhibition. Subsequently I have worked on large-scale canvases with a geopolitical character, within which the gaze has extended from that of the real image to the global gaze upon the world.

In recent years my painting has taken on a more intimate character; having abandoned landscape painting I discovered the power of color and the mark, playing on the boundary between figuration and abstraction. Along with this new way of working in painting, my passion for sculpture was born, expressing myself particularly in the modeling of clay.

After firing the clay I apply acrylic paint and enamel to it while it is still cold.

My sculptures, although anthropomorphic in character, are never faithful casts of the human figure; instead they include parts of fantastical animals that return the viewer to an ancestral dimension.