Giampaolo Babetto
Anello , 1983
18kt white gold, niello and pigment ring
Unique and signed
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 is innovative in concept. Made up of different abstract elements, broken down into modular units, or rendered moveable through the use of ingenious links, Babetto’s works are like small architectural pieces or small sculptures. Babetto prefers working in gold due to its stable malleability and its warm sheen which he combines with unconventional materials such as plastic or glass, ebony, dusting the internal surface with a velvet-like pigment in luminous primary colours of reds or blues or using enamel and age-old niello-based techniques. These materials are used as highlights and contrasts in works of increasingly pure and essential geometrical forms that have come to characterise the Padua School.