Elisa Zadi was born in 1979 in Arezzo. She graduated as an art teacher and subsequently earned a high school diploma in applied art with honors from the State Art Institute of her city. She subsequently enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where she graduated with honors in Painting; from 2007 to 2009, she worked in the same department as a Laboratory Technical Assistant. In 2009, she qualified to teach Graphic and Painting, and is currently teaching at the Porta Romana Art School in Florence.

In 2010, she earned a Master’s degree with honors in “Architecture and Sacred Arts” from the European University of Rome. Since 2018, she has collaborated with the UEL University of Florence. Her work explores questions of femininity, identity, and belonging through portraiture and self-portraiture. Her work explores the connection between humanity and nature, both introspectively and anthropologically and symbolically. A multifaceted artist, she works with painting, installation, performance, and poetry.
Elisa Zadi explores the possibilities of portraiture and the representation of identity through a series of figures that seek a connection between themselves and with nature in an imaginative and metaphysical space. These figures represent the challenge of being part of a constantly changing and evolving reality in which human relationships are compromised by the complexity and ephemerality of modern life, and the separation from nature also symbolizes the distance from the very truth of existence.

Her major artistic participations include “Cara Enfanta” curated by Greta Beccaglia and Marco Palamidessi at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, “Vitamins – Energy Tablets” curated by Carlo Palli and Laura Monaldi at the MART Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rovereto and the Museo Novecento in Florence, “Looking for Monnalisa” curated by Valerio Dehò at Castello Visconteo and Palazzo Broletto in Pavia, and “Mondi Possibili” curated by Marco Botti at Palazzo Datini in Prato. Her numerous awards include the selection for the Combat Prize and the Cairo Arte Prize in 2015, the Situ Festival Residency #3 in 2022, the Limen Prize in 2014, and the Casorati Prize in 2008. In 2021, she published her first poetry collection, “Il profumo del Giglio,” with Polistampa. In 2024, she was included in the Exibart Prize No. 4 in the Studio Visit publication published for the 60th Venice Biennale. Also in 2024, she received the Selection with Merit at the Mestre di Pittura Award and was a finalist for Exibart Prize No. 5, No. 6, and Art Team Cup No. 9.

She currently lives and works in Florence.