Elena Trailina (born in 1979) is an internationally recognized artist. She combines ancient techniques — such as buon fresco, encaustic painting, scented paintings, and gold leaf punching — with contemporary materials and a sensory, experimental artistic research. She graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Italy) and specialized in painting at the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts.

Since 2005, she has exhibited worldwide, with shows in Europe, United States, and Russia. Among her numerous exhibitions, her work has also been presented at the Italian Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale. Significant projects include the exhibition “Unknown Monk: #gettyinspired” at the IICLA in Los Angeles, in collaboration with the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the gold leaf decoration of the suite named after her and the reception area at the Galleria Vik Hotel in Milan, where she created a 200 m² mural in collaboration with Alex Folla. She also designed the packaging for La Piu Belle champagne from Vik Winery (Chile). Recently, her work entered the prestigious Getty Research Institute Collection (USA).

Alongside her artistic practice, Trailina has participated in and conducted several workshops in Moscow (Russia), Los Angeles, and St. Louis (USA), and has taught at various academies. In recent years, she has deepened her study of neuroscience and the workings of the human brain, with a particular focus on embodied cognition — the connection between body, mind, and learning.

Based on this foundation, she developed an innovative teaching approach grounded in play, sensory experience, and emotional intelligence, emphasizing the natural cognitive abilities of humans rather than an education system based on imposition. Referring to the original meaning of the term “educate” (from the Latin educere, “to draw out”), her method aims to liberate individual potential, guiding each person in creative discovery and expression for authentic and transformative learning.

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Alex Folla studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and went on to specialize at the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts, developing a deeply contemporary vision of figurative art. Yet by nature and drive, his artistic research soon turned toward the great tradition of Italian art, from the Proto-Renaissance to the Baroque.

In drawing, he looks to the Renaissance and the structural power of hatching; in painting, he focuses on the dramatic and spiritual light of Caravaggio. From this dual tension emerges a practice that is solid, visceral, and coherent—a bridge between past and present, between gesture and vision.

From 2014 to 2016, he exhibited and led international workshops dedicated to rediscovering Italian painting techniques:

•⁠  ⁠2014 – Unknown Monk, Moscow, Russia

•⁠  ⁠2015 – Road to Caravaggio, St. Louis, USA

•⁠  ⁠2016 – La Bottega Italiana, St. Louis, USA

•⁠  ⁠2016 – Unknown Monk 2.0, Italian Institute of Culture, Los Angeles

Between 2019 and 2021, he created a monumental 200-square-meter mural in the lobby of the Galleria Vik Milano Hotel, located in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

From 2021 to 2025, he taught painting and drawing at MPA, where he also served as artistic director and developed the school’s entire educational program.

Angelo Crespi, director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, wrote about him:

⁠“Alex Folla shows a maturity achieved through years of intense work. There’s no academic temptation, no cleverness in mixing sacred and rock, no nods to trends. Rather—anyone who knows Alex can confirm—a deep coherence between life and the artist’s playful nature, his ironic yet never irreverent approach. His fidelity to the gesture, through a technique learned and pushed to its limits, allows Folla to be both modern and ancient at once.”

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Maurizio Carriero is a visual artist and co-founder of La Mirabile Fucina, Maurizio Carriero studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. In 2003, he continued his training at the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar, focusing on new technologies applied to art, and in 2008 he completed a specialization in Visual Arts at the Academy of Brera in Milan.

His painting is rooted in the Baroque tradition of the Neapolitan school and evolved into a personal exploration of color, deeply influenced by the Flemish masters—especially Rubens. His current style is distinguished by a fluid, ever-shifting quality of the pictorial matter, where historical echoes are transformed into a living, imaginative language. He reinterprets tradition through a humanist, technical, and visionary approach grounded in the methods of the old ateliers.

At La Mirabile Fucina, this method becomes daily practice: image as a tool for self-knowledge, technique as living matter.

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