Sophia Vari

GIAMPAOLO BABETTO (b.1947, Italy) Giampaolo Babetto is one of the most influential exponents of the Avant-Garde goldsmiths’ scene since the mid 1960s. He is one of the veterans of the Padua School and has significantly moulded the image of art jewellery in Italy and around the world. He has been classified a mixed media artist, working not only on jewellery but also on silver objects, furniture design and architectural projects. Babetto is celebrated for his contributions to art jewellery, where sculptural purity meets the scale and intimacy of wearable art. I identify myself with the jewellery I create. Every time it’s a new challenge, because I know that what I create must be a living object, not just something sitting in a window, and it has to appear even more beautiful when worn around a woman’s neck, her wrist or her fingers. Giampaolo Babetto Giampaolo Babetto’s work reflects contemporary art movements such as concrete art, minimal art, kinetic or pop art in a unique, purist and plastic manner. His pieces are immediately recognisable by its simple design. He is inspired by the architecture of his homeland, by Palladio’s villas, and by the geometries in which he finds poetry. His jewellery […]

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. Vigna is also widely known for creating unique jewellery pieces that blur the line between sculpture, alchemy and adornment.  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 […]

Jannis Kounellis (b.1936, Greece – 2017, Italy) Kounellis was one of the world’s leading contemporary artists with a career spanning more than forty years. Kounellis’s work developed as a spectacular mixture of painting, collages and the staging of installations, ‘environments’, performances and theatrical shows, designed to express the tensions and alienation of contemporary society, and the multiplicity, obscurity and fragmentation of its language. In addition to his large- scale works, Kounellis created art jewellery in collaboration with Elisabetta Cipriani, translating his Arte Povera ethos into wearable art. These wearable works echo his sculptural vision, transforming his artistic vocabulary into intimate, tactile pieces that challenge traditional distinctions between fine art and jewellery He was a prominent member of Arte Povera, and his work was characterised by the juxtaposition of objects, materials and actions that were both physically and culturally antithetical to one another. Although starting as a painter, in the 1960s Kounellis introduced the use of everyday materials to his work – such as wool, coal, iron, stones, earth, wood and objects trouvés – as well as animals to create sculptures and installations. Since 1969 Kounellis has exhibited internationally and his work is part of various major public collections such as […]