Maurizio D’Andrea: Between Art, Psychology, and Symbol - An International Journey

Maurizio D’Andrea is an artist who resists simple definitions. Writer, painter, and visual researcher, his creative identity is born from the intersection of worlds that seem distant at first glance: science, psychology, philosophy, and art. With a degree in science with a specialization in volcanology, for many years he combined his work as a programmer and technology consultant with a constant exploration of aesthetic and symbolic research. Today, his life is entirely dedicated to art, understood not as mere image-making, but as a space of investigation of the unconscious and a performative stage for the symbol.

His painting is rooted in the tradition of Informal Abstraction, yet it is distinguished by a strong symbolic and psychological dimension. D’Andrea reinterprets, in a personal and contemporary key, the theories of Freud and Jung, bringing them into dialogue with aesthetic experience. In his canvases, signs, gestures, and layers of color do not serve to represent but to act: they become “living symbols”, free forms capable of evoking the unconscious and resonating within the collective imagination.

Over the years, D’Andrea has built a coherent and deeply personal artistic path, one that has steadily crossed national borders. In recent months, his works have been showcased in major collective exhibitions in Dubai, Beijing, and Seoul, three cities emblematic of the global contemporary art scene. These exhibitions were not merely opportunities for visibility, but genuine moments of cultural exchange. For the artist, exhibiting abroad is not only about “showing” an artwork, but about allowing it to live within a new context, enriching it through encounters with different gazes, codes, and traditions.

The year 2025 has proved to be a pivotal one in his career, marked by significant awards that confirm his international stature. On July 12, within the prestigious setting of the Sorbonne University in Paris, Maurizio D’Andrea was honored for his research on the application of Freud’s and Jung’s theories to art. This recognition highlighted a central aspect of his work: for him, art is at once an aesthetic experience and a cognitive practice, a form of philosophy embodied in color and gesture. The canvas, as he often emphasizes, is not a mere surface, but a symbolic stage where the unconscious can manifest through forms, movements, and chromatic tensions.

Just a few days later, on July 19, in Favara, Sicily, came another milestone: First Prize in the Painting Category at the Premio Internazionale Barone Antonio Mendola. This award celebrated not only the technical quality of his painting but also its evocative force and its ability to establish an immediate emotional resonance with the viewer.

Finally, in Cesenatico, also in Italy, ArtExpò Gallery bestowed upon him the title of Artist of the Year 2025. This recognition, combining prestige and visibility, consecrated his position within both the Italian and international contemporary art scenes. It was awarded for the consistency and originality of a career that has remained faithful to its identity over time while remaining open to dialogue with the wider world.

What makes D’Andrea’s work unique is his ability to unite artistic practice with theoretical reflection. Alongside painting, he has developed a body of critical writing that investigates the relationship between art and the unconscious. His forthcoming book, The Work Does Not Happen: It Happens in Us. Towards a New Symbolic Grammar of the Unconscious, explores the idea of art as a performative scene, where the symbol does not represent but acts, producing interior transformations in the viewer. It is a project that weaves together philosophy, psychology, and art criticism, testifying to the breadth of his inquiry.

D’Andrea’s canvases, dense with gestures and chromatic stratifications, emerge from a creative process that is both instinctive and deliberate. The artist does not paint to reproduce a prefigured image, but to set an event in motion: each mark is the trace of an impulse, an interior emergence that takes form in the pictorial space. The viewer is invited to step into this space, to recognize within it fragments of their own inner life.

In the contemporary art landscape—shaped by globalization and constant cultural cross-pollination—Maurizio D’Andrea’s work stands out for its integrity and recognizability. While rooted in the European tradition of Informal Abstraction, his painting is enriched by suggestions from diverse cultures encountered in his travels and through his exchanges with international artists and scholars. This openness has made him an authentically international interpreter, capable of transforming cultural differences into new expressive languages.

For D’Andrea, art is above all an encounter. An encounter between the artist’s gesture and the viewer’s gaze, between the visible and the invisible, between the self and the other. His works, though born from a profoundly personal process, never close in on themselves. Instead, they invite those who contemplate them to embark on an inner journey. They are symbolic spaces, places where memories, emotions, and intuitions can surface and transform.

With these foundations, Maurizio D’Andrea’s international path appears not as a mere geographical expansion, but as the natural evolution of a research trajectory that, from its very origins, has sought to surpass boundaries—physical, linguistic, and cultural—in order to speak directly to the universal unconscious.

Official website: www.dandreart.info