Marzia Colonna
by Katherine Locke

‘Emotion and synthesis’ replies Marzia Colonna promptly when I ask her what her work is about. We are sitting in her studio in Portesham, surrounded by her wonderful sculptures, on a perfect June afternoon. It is the last day of Dorset Art Weeks and she has had a steady stream of visitors throughout the fortnight. She says she enjoys opening her studio because “It’s only then I have time to talk to people, to have a proper intellectual exchange”.
It soon becomes clear that Marzia is intensely interested in people. When she talks about conveying emotion, she elaborates and says it is about trying to capture our shared experience as human beings. “When I am drawing or sculpting a nude” she says “I am that nude, I am not just recording what I see in front of me, I am describing a moment - the feeling of being nude in that position, at that time.”
Reference to the human body remains constant in Marzia’s work. She simplifies the human form until it is sometimes lost completely, but there is always an echo and recognition of the essentially human. “The language I use is the language of the body,” she says “but brought to a synthesis so it is about simplifying the feeling. It is not just representational, it goes beyond that.”
Italian born Marzia attended a highly academic convent in Pisa from the age of nine. She hated it and fought her parents to be sent to a local art school where a forward thinking headmaster had reduced the entrance age to twelve - “He thought fifteen was too late to start learning” she tells me. She had to take an entrance exam and was the only girl in her year group. By the time she was 17 she had completed her Masters. She then went on to study sculpture at the Accademia de Belle Arti in Florence, where she finished the three year course in just twelve months. Her passion for work is obvious - “I want to work until I drop dead”, she says “there is no point in a long life if I can't work”.
She talks to me about some of her pieces in depth - particularly a small piece called Homage to Mozart that nestles into a corner of her studio. The piece was commissioned by a pianist friend of hers, who wanted to have something to reflect her love of the composer. Daunted by the task of interpreting the work of a genius, who uses the whole spectrum of emotion as his palette, Marzia spent time endlessly listening to his music. Finally, it was one note that captured her imagination. “The note soared upwards and upwards and finally a wave of sound folds back into itself”, she explains and the final sculpture has captured this quality of soaring and folding. It is one of her smaller pieces - she made nine in the series - “Almost all of them have been bought by musicians” she says “so it must encapsulate the feeling of the music on some level.”
Work that provokes a strong emotional response is what Marzia Colonna is all about. She talks about how the Dorset landscape has been influential in her work, particularly being near the sea. “As a child I often went to the beach, even in winter when it was cold. My relationship with the sea is based on need - it would be too awful for me to live inland.” She compares the Dorset landscape to her native Tuscany. “It’s something about the hills” she says, “with landscapes and bodyscapes, it is hard to know where one ends and the other begins”.
Marzia left Italy when she was just nineteen after she met and married Robert Montagu. They lived in London for several years before making Dorset their home “After moving to Dorset, I didn’t look back” she explains.
Before I leave Marzia’s studio, I take a quick glance through the visitor’s book. It is filled with praise for her work, “A feast for the senses” says one and “Treasures to stumble across” says another. She is quietly modest about her work, but clearly delighted at the positive responses. As I make my way up the drive, people are already queuing at the gate to come in. There is an air of excitement about them, as if they know they are about to see something special. If you missed her work this time around, you will have to wait until next year, but make a note in your diary, it is definitely worth it.