Painted Screens: Italian Experimental Artist-Animators

Many Italian visual artists of the 20th century approached animated films as a fertile land to extend their artistic search beyond the canvas and develop original connections between art, painting and animation. The artists-animators challenged traditional cel animation and the representational and narrative styles, as well as and the industrial organization of work. In fact, they championed a handicraft idea of the product, to foster a radical expressive search based on alternative forms of animation: abstraction, direct-on-film painting, glass painting, and computer animation. This article presents the works and aesthetics of the foremost Italian artists-animators, following a chronological order.