Pizzi Cannella begins to paint at a very young age. From 1974 to 1977 he attends Alberto Ziveri’s painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and at the same time he enrols in Philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome.



Memory is, for over thirty years, the main theme in Pizzi Cannella’s extremely personal creative journey, expressed through a refined and enigmatic language of cryptic signs, recurring symbols that trace an almost esoteric meaning, like the jewel, dried flower, chair, fan, lizard, where life and the essence of a forgotten past, nostalgia, dreams and the collective memories of a present contingent and of a future project are metaphorically condensed.



Pizzi Cannella has his first personal show in 1977, at the La Stanza Gallery of Rome. He sets up his studio in the ex Pastificio Cerere, in the San Lorenzo neighbourhood, founding, together with Ceccobelli, Dessi, Gallo, Nunzio and Tirelli, the San Lorenzo School: he opens the studio to the public on the occasion of the Ateliers show, organised in 1984 by Achille Bonito Olivia in the ex Pastificio Cerere. In the same year he exhibits his work in the show Internals and Figures, at Sargentini’s L’Attico Gallery, his first personal oil on canvas, to which will follow his solo show at Annina Nosei Gallery in New York, Galerie Folker Skulima in Berlin in 1985, and Galerie Triebold in Basilea in 1986. He exhibits in numerous shows in Italy, Post-abstraction at the Rotonda della Besana of Milan (1987), Rome in show 1970-79 at Palazzo Esposizione in Rome (1995), Italian art. The last forty years. Iconic painting at the Galleria Arte Moderna in Bologna (1997). He and takes part in exhibitions abroad, participating as well in the Biennial of Paris (1985), Venice Biennale (1988, 1993), Istanbul Biennale (1989), Quadrennial of Rome (1987). He participates in the first Biennial of Peking in 2003, and in 2009 the Mart of Rovereto celebrates, with a ample anthology of artworks, the work of Pizzi Cannella together with the other members of the School of San Lorenzo. In 2017, Pizzi Cannella shows at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg with the exhibition Salon de Musique and Other Paintings. Pizzi Cannella is part in numerous permanent collections including Palazzo Reale in Milan, Galleria Arte Moderna in Bologna, Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art in Peking, MACRO in Rome, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg and many more.