Scuola Napoletana dei Madonnari

Gennaro Troia, aka Jena Soul, was born in Naples in 1964, and began his career as a street painter in Paris in the 1980s. Coming from a field entirely outside the arts (he studied foreign languages and tourism), he began chalk-drawing on sidewalks across France, Spain and Italy. In Northern Italy in the 1990s, Gennaro began to follow the age-old tradition of the ‘Madonnari’, who use chalk to represent sacred subjects. The artist works within a classical tradition, but he is not afraid to embrace experimental excursions into surrealism, as well as street painting with social messages. In the early 2000s Gennaro founded the SCUOLA NAPOLETANA DEI MADONNARI, with the aim of collecting testimonies about the ancient traditions of chalk street-painting. He has collaborated with academics, writers, documentary-makers and other street-artists, always seeking to give dignity to this unique art-form. Gennaro has been invited to participate in many international festivals. He has taught the art of chalk-painting to disadvantaged children in Palestine, Romania and Italy, and he has exhibited his unique style of 3D street painting in Holland, Portugal, Qatar, the Emirates, Mexico, United States and Azerbaijan. In the United Arab Emirates, Gennaro was commissioned to help celebrate the 44th anniversary of the Founding of the State in Abu Dhabi; he has also taken part in festivals of Street Performance in Sharjah and Deira. In Doha, Qatar, he was the artistic representative of Napoli Soccer Club (his favorite team) in the Italian Soccer Super Cup Grand Final against Juventus, while in Baku he participated in the artistic events during the Formula 1 European Grand Prix.