Gianna Liani was born in Martignacco, in the province of Udine, in June 1946. Her childhood was spent in a numerous and modest family, where harmony did not rule. This scenario meant that the young Gianna asked herself many questions and that her character was strengthened, pushing her to work independently.
Gianna Liani gets married and, together with her husband, manages a restaurant and a nightclub. In 1968 their son Doriano is born. Later, the couple opened a store of personalized handmade wedding favors and Gianna, thanks to a grant from the European Union, taught her techniques of creation, packaging and sales to dozens of interns from all over Europe and Arab countries. In that period she starts painting pictures and, thanks to the collaboration with the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade, she exports them and participates in numerous exhibitions all over the world: Europe, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Arab Emirates. In 1995 she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Art Biennial with the work entitled “White Horse”. After years of traditional figurative painting, she develops a style of painting that refers to Andy Warhol’s Pop Art and renames it Ultra Pop Art In Progress. During her many stays in the United States, she personally knows the glass sculptor Dale Chihuly and the photographer Helmut Newton, whose works inspire her, along with those of classical painters, from Delacroix to Klimt.
In 2021 she participates in the group exhibition “Troisi Poeta Massimo”, in Naples, dedicated to the actor Massimo Troisi. The works of Gianna Liani are kept in many institutions and private collections in Italy and abroad. For twenty-two years she has been shuttling back and forth to London, where her son, an architect, lives.