Paolo Ferluga - Ashtaroth

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

I am Paolo Ferluga, an Italian artist born in Trieste in 1967, I live and work in Trieste. After attending the first year of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice I graduate in architecture in 1994. I soon abandon the profession of architect to devote myself entirely to painting. Until 2024 I painted mainly urban landscapes that in 2003 allowed me to participate as the representative of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region in the exhibition Vernice – Paths of young Italian painting. Subsequently I worked always on large formats on canvases with geopolitical character within which the gaze shifted from that of the real image to the global gaze on the world.

In recent years my painting has taken on a more intimate character; having abandoned landscape painting I discovered the strength of color and of 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 intervene at a later stage with acrylic color and enamel.

My sculptures, although anthropomorphic in character, are never faithful casts of the human figure, but rather include parts of fantastic animals that bring the observer back to an ancestral dimension.