Born in Córdoba, Argentina on October 19, 1946, Eugenio Zanetti is an art director, illustrator, stage designer, painter, designer, playwright, and film director. He has had a long and decorated career in cinema and theater in both Argentina and the United States. As a painter, he has had individual exhibitions in Argentina, Mexico, the USA, China, Brazil and Spain.
He studied architecture at the National University of Córdoba in the mid-1960s.
He participated as set designer and artistic director in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s classic film, Medea.
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Living in Hollywood since the 1980s, he has worked on films, including Slam Dance (1987), Some Girls (1988), for which he won a Toronto Festival of Festivals Design Award, Flatliners (1990), Last Action Hero (1993), Soapdish (1991), Restoration (1995), for which he earned an OSCAR Academy Award for Best Art Direction, What Dreams May Come (1998), and The Haunting (1999). He also directed the short film Quantum Project (2000), Alfonso Arau’s Zapata: El sueño de un héroe (2004), and Roland Joffé’s There Be Dragons (2011). In 2014, he released his first film as writer and director, Amapola, a fantasy drama starring Camilla Belle, François Arnaud, Geraldine Chaplin, Leonor Benedetto, Lito Cruz and Elena Roger.(2000).
In 2010, the Association of Cinematographic Chroniclers of Argentina distinguished him with a special Silver Condor Award in the year of the Argentine Bicentennial for expanding knowledge of Argentine cinema and Argentine professionals abroad. This award was was together with Juan José Campanella, Luis Puenzo, Gustavo Santaolalla and Luis Bacalov.

He has received honorary doctorates from Esserp in Spain, as well as from the University of the Arts in Buenos Aires, the University of Palermo. He has also received the title of Distinguished Citizen from the cities of Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Los Angeles. he has been recognised with the Estrella de Mar, María Guerrero and Trinidad Guevara Awards on multiple occasions.
Zanetti has worked on more than 40 theater and opera productions in Europe and South America, including: A Masked Ball and Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi, and Madame Butterfly and Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. He also had a successful career as a musical director, receiving the Thalia Award in Argentina for his local productions of They’re Playing Our Song, Chicago and Dracula as a director, and the same award for his adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen. He also earned an Estrella de Mar Award for The Cherry Orchard, Chapter Two, Company, and Peer Gynt.

As a painter, Zanetti is best known for his large oil paintings with figurative images that emerge from the primordial darkness, shining like jewels. He describes his work as an expression of metaphysical mystery. His images seem to exist outside of time and space and defy categorization by trend.
As regisseur and director of theater and opera, he is famous for meticulously and exquisitely designed sets, endowed with great inventiveness and fantasy.
His paintings are almost entirely portraits of characters from his imagination. Often the characters emerge, illuminated from a deep, dense and dark space. The baroque references are clear, achieving a halo of mystery and spirituality. He evokes the sensation of timelessness.
Zanetti’s fascination for fine arts and his technical virtuosity are complemented/expressed through the use of non-traditional tools and formats. His canvases portray characters emerging from different social and historical realities, which convey human emotions in a beautiful new way.