Art and the Wild West in the Roannais

It is not often that you are both surprised and fascinated when you visit someones home for the first time.

However, recently in Roanne, the main township of the Roannais, in the Rhône-Alpes region we had the unique pleasure of meeting a locally renowned artist who specialises in creating colourful paintings of American Indians from the Wild West.

Indians such as Geronimo, amongst many others.

He has exhibited and sold his huge canvasses throughout France, and has worked and lived in the same house for 40 years, or more.

His house is jampacked full of art, artefacts, magazines, drawings, scattered all around, and stacked to the ceiling. Everywhere you look there are samples of his many drawings. To say that he is extremely prolific would be a total understatement.

His working environment seems to be virtually the whole house. even though he has a beleagured-looking studio in the back garden which looks to be held together by driftwood and canvas.

The place is a living testament to a dedicated artist at work.

You could almost say that his home is a work of art itself – certainly the result of art, seemingly ‘organically’ grown over the many years of busy habitation!

Serge Zuliani is now over 70 years old, and lives, almost hermit-like in his abode, constantly creating his distinctive works of art. He is from Italian descent, his family having left Italy to escape the rule of Mussolini in the period of the second world war.

He lives a simple life. A true artist in the classic sense! And long may he continue producing his canvasses of the American Indian – capturing the essence, magic, history, and colour of this lost period of the original wild west!

The Pure Art Gallery

www.purefrancenow.com