In Claudia’s path, fashion, illustration, and tennis have chased one another, sought one another out, and eventually met, not by chance: through fashion design studies in Milan, Gucci embroideries, Casablanca prints, and sketchbooks filled in the stands of a tennis court.

Before becoming a swift stroke of color, tennis for Claudia was both a sport she played and an imaginary world she explored. A world made of outfits and clay courts, of bodies under tension and gestures that become choreography, of an elegance that is only apparent, concealing effort, discipline, and stubbornness underneath.

Through the work of this young illustrator from Puglia, tennis is interpreted as form, memory, and tension. Not merely as a sport to be watched, but as a language to be crossed through with pastels, each time trying to hold together two truths that only seem to stand in opposition: the elegance and the effort of the racket sport.

Even before tennis and illustration, what kinds of imagery shaped you?

“Basically, I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. When I was younger — and actually up until a few years ago — my dream was to work in fashion, to become a fashion designer. It was an idea I carried with me for many years, so fashion, in the broadest sense, was definitely my driving force, the foundation of everything I did during those formative years.

I studied fashion design in Milan, and from there I started working. In reality, I never really worked as a fashion designer in the most traditional sense of the term. From the very beginning, almost without consciously choosing it, I was pushed toward more illustrative work, because that was clearly what came through most strongly in what I was doing. My first job, for example, was at Gucci, where I worked for three years as an embroidery designer. That was a wonderful experience, and it pushed me even further toward illustration. In terms of imagery and inspiration, it mattered enormously that I worked at Gucci during the Alessandro Michele years. Everything with a rétro feeling, everything vintage, everything that carries the taste of the past, became a huge source of inspiration for me. And I think that even now, in the illustrations I make, I am always trying to leave a small rétro feeling behind.

Another decisive experience was working for Casablanca, again for three years, designing prints and illustrations. It isn’t a huge brand, but it is very recognizable, and an important part of its iconographic identity is tied to tennis. Casablanca has always explored this sport in a primarily aesthetic way, trying to recreate an imaginary world made up of tennis clubs, après-sport, and relaxed elegance. I think they were among the first to do it in that way, and then little by little tennis grew enormously in popularity visually as well, and many other brands began to follow that path. That, inevitably, shaped me a great deal too.

Then, being in Italy, working remotely, and feeling more and more the need to do something of my own, something for myself, I started asking myself how I might enter the world of tennis more actively. I didn’t know exactly how, but I felt I had to find a way. So I began sharing my drawings, following creators, looking for connections outside Italy too, putting down roots in that world little by little. Two years ago I went to the Internazionali di Roma and brought my sketchbook with me. I tried making a few drawings there while I was watching the match. I had never done it before. I didn’t really know how to move within that space. It was, among other things, practically Nadal’s final year, and he was training on Centre Court. I made a sketch of him while he was practicing, and at that moment I had a very clear feeling: I wanted illustration to be a central part of my life. I’m not saying my ‘work’ in the strictest sense of the word, but I understood that I wanted to keep doing exactly that.

I had been very inspired by a painter you often see at Roland Garros, and also by an English illustrator who years ago used to create graphics and illustrations for Wimbledon. I thought I wanted to bring a little of that dimension back into tennis. So slowly, I started making and sharing my illustrations and sketches. And in a very gradual way I began, I think, to get noticed first by other people within the tennis community — creators, fans from different parts of the world — and eventually by brands as well. Now I feel I’ve taken the right direction.”

When and how did tennis become part of your life? And how did it remain there?

“Tennis entered my personal path at first as a small interlude, but an important one. I had played as a child, in middle school and then in high school, but I was never a particularly competitive person. I did it for fun, but I already loved tennis back then, above all for its imagery, for everything it represented. It was 2008, there were Nadal and Federer. It was a world that attracted me enormously on an aesthetic level. But deep down, I didn’t have that true athletic or sporting spark. And yet it has always remained the only sport I have really practiced.

More recently — three or four years ago — I found myself in a moment of emptiness, or perhaps boredom, I’m not sure how best to define it. I turned on the television and started watching the US Open, the first day, almost by accident. And from that moment on, I never stopped. It happened all of a sudden. Tennis has always been present in my life, but in a tangential way. At that moment, though, it was clearly something I needed: to distract myself, to fill time, to find a center again. And I understood that tennis was, in fact, a fundamental part of my life.

At the same time, for a while I had also wanted to go back to playing myself. For at least a couple of years I had this persistent thought: I wanted to reconnect with tennis on a practical level as well. But I was lazy, I felt a little out of shape, I didn’t even know anymore what my level was, where to go, how to begin again. But the idea stayed there. Then it actually happened. Alongside this renewed closeness as a spectator, I started taking lessons again, started playing again. And now tennis is completely part of my life.”

When you observe tennis as an illustrator, what is the first thing you look for — the first thing that strikes you and eventually becomes the subject of your work?

“When I look at tennis through the eyes of an illustrator, what strikes me is always changing. At first, when I began sharing my drawings, it was mainly players in motion — and I say that almost in a banal sense, because in a way drawing a player in action is a little like taking a photograph.

But from that first moment when I started drawing courtside, the way I perceive gestures changed. When you draw live, you are forced to work very quickly, to capture movement with a rapid line. And that way of drawing, so immediate, later influenced the way I draw every day as well. Dynamic line, action, movement: they entered into my visual language.

Sometimes I feel like illustrating the court, the crowd, the setting. Other times I’m interested in lingering over a detail: an arm striking the ball in a forehand, a body position that perhaps, live or on television, you only barely register because everything happens so fast. I’m fascinated when gestures become almost choreographic. It’s a constant change. Now I also like widening the frame, building images with shapes, colors, dots, splashes, in order to represent the crowd or the energy of the action in a more abstract way.”

What can drawing say about sport that other arts, perhaps photography, cannot?

“Art connected to sport, compared with photography or other visual forms, has this particular ability to distort, synthesize, emphasize. Through drawing, you can convey different sensations. Art and tennis, after all, are not even a new association. You only have to think of the historical tournament posters: they have always been linked to the world of art, or made with the contribution of artists called upon to build the iconography of a tournament or a player. So I think there is something in tennis that is naturally akin to artistic language.

Perhaps it’s also a matter of discipline. I don’t want to compare it too directly with the discipline tennis requires, but in my line I am always thinking of something that has to be dynamic, fast, but also intentional. And in a certain sense, tennis taught me that: movement, speed, force, but always within a controlled gesture. Because otherwise, to stay within the language of tennis, the ball goes out of the court.

Then there is the question of elegance, which is central but also a little funny, in a way. Yes, tennis is elegant, because athletes’ bodies produce real forms and choreographies. If we think, for example, of Federer’s one-handed backhand, a freeze-frame can recall the movement of a dancer. In that sense, very few other sports are like this. But at the same time, I always feel like saying that the idea of tennis as an elegant sport is by now almost a false myth. Or rather: it is a myth built on imagery. Because tennis is, in reality, also an exhausting sport. The idea of elegance comes from far away, from a tradition a hundred years old: the poise, the perfect outfit, the tennis club. But today that is above all a symbolic frame. And it is beautiful, of course — I like it too — but I know real tennis is not only that. What interests me is precisely the contrast between those two things: elegance and effort.”

What is it like to illustrate a match live? What kind of emotions does it give you, and what do you want to convey?

“When I started drawing tennis live, the feeling was beautiful. In theory, I could easily make that drawing at home, at my desk — perhaps even better, without the sun in my face, without the heat, and all the difficulties of the moment. But it would not be the same thing. Drawing there helps me look and draw in a way I could not achieve elsewhere. On an emotional level, it binds me much more closely to that moment. I have that drawing made in that place during a match, in that precise instant. It allows me to return perspectives that perhaps a photograph or a classic television shot would not have. Photographs in tennis are almost always taken courtside, front-on or from the side. I might instead be sitting in a different corner and see the same pose from behind, or from a more oblique angle.

That interests me a great deal too: the fact that we are used to always seeing the same angles, while through art you can find new perspectives.”

What are you trying to tell when you draw tennis?

“When people ask me what I am trying to express through my work, I realize that they are often things I do without questioning them too much, without stopping to theorize them. But I think that, going back to what we were saying earlier, tennis is not only aesthetics, even though many people still continue to think of it that way. I like putting athletes, players, at the center, naturally in my own way, in forms that change every time. Sometimes I represent them one way, sometimes another. But the core always remains there. Because in the end that is what I most like to look at: yes, I like the match, the competitiveness, the game, but what interests me above all is the admiration I feel — and that we as fans feel — for these athletes. I’m struck by the way they move, by the way they manage to do things that I myself, even though I play tennis, consider superhuman. I’m fascinated by discipline, dedication, all those qualities that lie behind the gesture.”

Is there a tournament you dream of telling through your drawing because you feel it is especially close to your art?

“If I think of a tournament I would love to portray live, the first answer that comes naturally is definitely the US Open. Also because, as I said earlier, it was precisely the tournament that reignited something inside me, that brought me back to tennis in such a powerful way. And then, beyond the fact that the other Slams are obviously incredible — and indeed, if we speak of Roland Garros or Wimbledon, we are speaking of worlds that truly have no comparison — at the US Open I sense a very particular energy, a unique one. From what you can see, from what is told about it, there seems to be something genuinely different there: the enormous stadium, the crowd constantly making noise, that sort of controlled chaos, that urban intensity.

It gives me the feeling of a tournament in which my art could fit in naturally. My way of drawing is very fast, very dynamic, with colors that can also be pop, very bright, and I feel that the US Open could really be a context that is deeply in tune with what I do.”