Roberta Coni is an Italian painter born in Marino (Rome) in 1976 who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1999.
Roberta Coni at a glance
- Born: 1976, Marino (Rome), Italy
- Nationality: Italian
- Training: Academy of Fine Arts, Rome (graduated 1999); grants in Spain and the United States
- Known for: Large-scale portraits where faces emerge from the shadows
- Style/Medium: Oil paint with heavy paste of bitumen, melted wax and glue
- Also works in: Video art combined with her paintings
- Current project: Painting the entire Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
“I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eyes weave, and I behold the reality beneath.”
She integrated her studies abroad with two grants in Spain and the United States. Primarily interested in the human figure, she mixes the classical technique of oil painting with heavy body paste made of bitumen, melted wax, and glue. Since 2009, her artistic research has been geared toward large-scale paintings, in which the face often emerges from the shadows. Her work is characterized by its strong realism while combining rougher materials, and she has created a compendium of contemporary work as she integrates video-art with the visual language of her paintings.
- Born in Marino, Italy, in 1976.
- Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
- Uses oil painting with heavy body paste, bitumen, and wax.
- Focused on large-scale paintings since 2009.
- Integrates video-art with her painting practice.
Female figures with poignant expressions, faces in the foreground, with detailed attention to the skin and eyes, and the secret pulse of the pictorial surface. The faces are often violated by time flowing relentlessly on the skin, deforming and shaping it over the years to lay bare the soul. Recently she has begun an ambitious project related to the pictorial realization of the entire Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and she collaborates with several galleries abroad in England, Turkey, China, the United States, Canada, France, Singapore, and Brazil.
