Lisandro Rota was born in Lucca in 1946. After graduating in accounting, in 1969 he started his self-taught pictorial activity. At first attracted by the landscape vein, it gradually diverges from it, transforming its pictorial language with increasingly surreal notes. His worlds and the characters that populate them are characterized by a subtle anxiety that attracts the viewer. From the early 2000s, Rota arrives, with renewed creative impetus, to the current style and ways, where a much more calming figure serves him to affectionately mock the human being and his habits.
His works are found in important collections scattered all over the world. Journalists, curators and critics have been interested in his work such as: Piergiorgio Mei, Mario Marzocchi, Lucia Toesca, Mario Rocchi, Marco Palamidessi, Francesca Torregiani, Filippo Lotti, Elena Orlando, David Menghini, Silvano Granchi, Eleonora Belli and Gregorio Andreini.

Exhibitions (selection)

Critical texts

«I have never made a mystery, in art as in life, of my great passion for simple and therefore noble and true spirits, such as Lisandro Rota. I have known him and we have known him for some time now: besides his imagination and undoubted artistic qualities, we admire his unmistakable philosophical way of lightening life from his worries, of dropping the ballast of existence, through the wise orchestration of a domestic surrealism, exhilarating, nourished by irony and playful spirit […]. Skillful inventor, subtle juggler of brilliant and bittersweet situations, in which man and his habits become in fact his sweet and indispensable target, Lisandro is a rare artist, a dreamer who dreams to give us the representation of an emotion created to be inevitably ours.»
Marco Palamidessi

«As in Fellini's films, in Rota's paintings the presence of abundant female figures of shapes, powerful, almost virile, yet so tender and sweet is almost inevitable. Heroin in slippers and floral dress, immense and very light, fragile and opulent, airy and delicate, graceful in being and bearing, sometimes seductive, cheerful and melancholic, naive yet wise, great and never cumbersome, great because it is, this woman is a mixture well mixed with tenderness and restlessness, dedication to the house and desire to go away, in the perennial search for a moment's distance from gray normality.»
Marco Palamidessi

«If we look at Lisandro Rota's works, it is as if our unconscious emerged from sleep and transfigured into the representations we see. It is as if we were plunged into a dreamy, surreal world, the world of childhood, a colorful and playful microcosm, caricatural but, at the same time, also simple and familiar as if it were observed by the eyes of a child.»
Elena Orlando

«Corpulent and opulent, overflowing but very light women, a sort of grace in movement expertly constructed and orchestrated that makes the entire Rotiana pictorial symphony a virtuous physiognomy. Figures with symbolic values ​​that [...], almost paradoxically, manage to give a lightness, naturally driven by grotesque irony but, never as in this case, effective.»
Filippo Lotti

«Artist with strong communicative skills, Rota knows how to play with brushes as well as words - read the formidable titles of the paintings in this regard - in conducting a very lucid operation in the service of the idea he intends to convey. His is not an intellectual or complicated painting, Rota does not stand on any pedestal and does not have the presumption to teach us anything, rather he takes us by the hand and leads us into his fantasy world, populated by irresistible figures, perhaps poor in resources but very rich of spirit, always able to snatch a smile from us.»
David Menghini

«Rota's images are fantastic worlds, the result of free and spontaneous thought that, with calmness and irony, addresses thorny issues such as the tendency to social isolation and, at the same time, the need to escape from daily routine, especially by the woman who, in the collective imagination, has always been the most compressed and crushed figure by the joints between work, home and family. In my opinion, works such as "Even in the choice of playmates certain details cannot be overlooked", "mare ad personam" and "Domestic equilibrium", well identify this feeling, or the difficulty of interacting with each other and the a sense of oppression experienced by man, or rather woman, contemporary. Just the woman is the absolute protagonist of her creations. The female figure of Rota is full and full-bodied; it is like a protective divinity that creates everything and guides everything, a sort of "Magna Mater", like the primitive Venuses: powerful, solemn and who can do anything.»
Eleonora Belli