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Carola Mazot

Sometimes I find myself thinking about what would have become of us without certain combinations occurring in life.
For instance, standing before a canvas—that mysterious encounter whose arrival is unknown, and without which I cannot imagine existence—has such distant origins.
It began with very early and rigorous work when a post-impressionist painter, Vettore Zanetti Zilla, my grandfather, came to live with us. I was thirteen. His daily lessons, being with him as he pointed out how many shades of green composed a mass of trees, or discovering the glimmer of light that contours objects giving sense to volume, were very important.
When my grandfather passed away, I entered the studio of Donato Frisia. Initially, I was interested in his teaching. He removed my pencil preparation, making me "draw by painting." It was a style focused above all on technique and skill.
I painted from life the subjects that Frisia prepared for himself: still lifes and portraits of ladies. At a certain point, I left his studio and met the sculptor Lorenzo Pepe. Since I was of age to enter the Academy, he gave me drawing lessons with a different approach.
I am deeply grateful to him for a teaching that my previous masters had not given me. He told me that while working, I should never lose sight of the whole. In fact, while sketching, I had to draw the large geometric mass in which the figure was contained, and even when focusing on details, I should never take my eye off the whole. Through this, I discovered harmony and the connection between various points: a reality I copied and from which a mystery emerged—a charm that has always stayed with me. At the Academy, I thus learned to choose among the teachings of various masters.
There is a mystery, something undefined that arrives while painting. Where it comes from, I do not know. I know that while working, after the initial layout of space and the dynamics of the painting, I must follow the impulse, and my paintings finish themselves when they want to. Some, very rarely, in a few days; others in months. Some in years, which is why I always have many in progress. I often think about what would have happened to me if I hadn't had a painter grandfather or if I hadn't met that teacher, and so on.
After all, our entire existence is a weave of combinations, with this thread accompanying us from where we come to where we will arrive.

From Carola Mazot’s diary

(Valdagno 2-12-1929 - † Milano 24-05-2016)

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