NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS

As NIU and the world around us deals with a global pandemic, artists continue to find ways to express themselves. In the College of Visual and Performing arts the learning and teaching hasn’t stopped, it’s simply evolved to meet the needs and limitations of the situation. Over the coming days, we’ll be featuring how NIU students, alumni and faculty in the arts are continuing to do what they love.

Paolo Colombo
Major: Master of Art, 1983
Hometown: Athens, Greece

Photo credits: Boris Kir

This artwork was part of Paolo’s exhibition at Bernier Eliades Gallery in Athens, Greece form January 16 through February 15, 2020.

A recent exhibition, Of Birds and Monkeys, with Kiki Smith ran from February 14 through March 20 at Tristan Hoare Gallery in London, England. 

Paolo Colombo is an Italian artist and curator. Born in 1949 in Turin, Italy, Colombo lives and works in Athens, Greece, and is the Art Advisor for the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2008 to present). He earned his Master of Art degree from the NIU School of Art and Design in 1983. 

In 2017, Colombo curated the Iraqi Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Between 2001 – 2007, Colombo was the curator of the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo in Rome, and the director of the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva between 1989 – 2000. In 1999, Colombo curated the 6th Istanbul Biennale. In 1977, Colombo was the first European artist to exhibit at PS1, New York.

After a 25 year hiatus, Colombo took up his personal work as an artist again, coinciding with his move to Athens, Greece. “I just picked up a pencil and my old box of watercolors…and started as if one day had not gone by. I have only used watercolour and paper during my whole life because think it is easily transportable and because it is a technique that does not allow for corrections.”

Colombo works exclusively with watercolors and pencil, “a strictly intimate practice which demands to be seen one on one, like one would read a book…it is fundamentally lyrical”. Colombo’s drawings are dream-like meditations, which include poetry, animals, soft washes of color and his signature checkered squares and fine lines.

Are you a student, alumni or faculty member in the NIU College of Visual and Performing Arts with video of yourself performing or creating, or photos of a finished product? Use this form to share it with us.