Giorgio Vigna
(b.1955, Italy
Giorgio Vigna was born in Verona in 1955 and trained artistically between his hometown, Venice, Rome and Milan.
He is an artist who, on the borderline between reality and imagination, creates natural forms capable of manifesting primary and primordial aspects. Adventures of earth and water, fire and wind in which natural and artificial, poor and precious are combined. Vigna moves on the border between the real and imaginary worlds, between what is and what appears.
His works, from sculptures to jewellery, from works on paper to installations, reflect the breadth and depth of his constant research. He uses various materials including glass, metals and paper, treated in ever new and surprising ways. Vigna explores them and seeks to reveal their hidden possibilities.
The forms are primary, expressions of the elements he works with. Strong and natural, universal and timeless, rich in symbolic values. In 2003 Giorgio Vigna created the site-specific installation La Radura for Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu that initiated the Olnick Spanu Art Program. In 2013 the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona hosted the solo exhibition Natural States, for which Giorgio Vigna created the permanent glass installation Acquaria for Carlo Scarpa’s fountain, donated to the city of Verona in 2021 on the occasion of the exhibition Lapilli in the Sculpture Gallery, during the centenary of Licisco Magagnato’s birth. In 2017, for the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, he created the work Fuochi di Rugiada (Fires of Dew), made by Vetreria VENINI. Since 2018 he has been called to join the Scientific Committee of Le Stanze del Vetro, a project of the Giorgio Cini Foundation with the support of Pentagram Stiftung. In 2022 he donated his 30-year archive of drawings and sketches related to his experience with the material of glass to the Giorgio Cini Foundation onlus. In June 2023 he inaugurated his solo exhibition Analogies at the Museo Eremitani in Padua, a natural continuation of the path he began in 2022 with the exhibition Sassi at the Oratorio di San Rocco in Padua. Also in September 2023, Giorgio Vigna received the award for the Glass in Venice prize.
His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Argentina, Austria, China, Korea, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Holland, Monaco, Russia, the United States, and Switzerland.
Giorgio’s works are also part of public and private collections including: MAD, Museum of Arts & Design, New York, USA. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy; Castelvecchio Museum, Verona, Italy; Museum of Glass, Murano, Venice, Italy; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, USA. IMA, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum, Athens, Greece; Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy; Miaao, Museo Internazionale delle Arti Applicate Oggi, Turin, Italy. Olnick Spanu Art Program, Garrison, New York, USA; Olnick Spanu Collection, New York, USA; Diane Venet Collection, Paris, France; Designmuseum, Helsinki, Finland; Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Castello Sforzesco, Milan, Italy. Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva, Switzerland; Fondazione Raffaele Cominelli Permanent Collection, San Felice del Benaco BS, Italy. Bellini Pezzoli Collection, Castello Sforzesco, Milan, Italy.
