CAROLINE BERGONZI

 

STATEMENT

As I feel too intimidated to take candid photos of strangers, I am all the more delighted when someone freely consents to pose for me, and I am always incredibly challenged to paint a person from life, face to face. The rush of adrenaline that accompanies this always surprises me. If I worked from photographs alone I would not feel the charge I get from working with live models. Painting from life, where two people share hours looking at each other, is not just about capturing a person’s image, for which photography might be better suited; it is a long and patient exploration for the essence within a person to render on canvas their spark of life..

My main interest in portraiture is to capture the best resemblance, the essence, and the presence of a person. From the comments I have heard from my models, I might catch an inner beauty, but I resist the temptations of anything mundane or purposely attering.

I want my portraits to match my perception, so

my focus is on the eyes, the center of the face and on the hands, while the rest, details of the clothing or the background can remain as a blur. There should be an authentic approach for a subjective yet very realistic representation.

I usually work in sessions of about three hours, with enough time to set up the subject as far as position, outfit, setting, background, light and hopefully mood go. The slowness of the development, compared to photography, provides enough time for the models to actually chat, daydream, relax, forget the pose and reveal themselves. It is only then that I might see through them and that I can attempt to immortalize any detail.

BIOGRAPHY

Authenticity has always ruled Bergonzi’s life. Freedom made it unpredictable. Attached to her Principality, Monaco, and family lineage, she prefers being anonymous in big cities. Being true to her instincts paid off. The originality and quality of her work has brought her art to the 2010 World Expo, in Shanghai, to the United Nations. She currently has several monumental public art metal sculptures on display in the US and in France. Her unusual journey have been chronicled by the press and TV (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BFM TV, NY1 TV...).

CAROLINE BERGONZI grew up under the blue Mediterranean sky. After 17 years in this peaceful and international state, she moved to Paris. In parallel to the challenges of business school and postgraduate studies in fashion management, she was active and blossomed in such creatively diverse environments as video games and Haute Couture. Some exams and missions later, especially in China and in Italy, she chose New York as her new home, for its human masses, its rhythms, and its mosaic of cultures. The brutal reality of this new urban and mental environment encouraged her in a deeper immersion in empiric philosophy, psychology and spirituality. As the angel of the movie "Wings of Desire," she swapped her cerebral perspective for a true experience of being alive, encountering a full gamut of emotions ranging from fear to love, through loneliness, joy, pain, pleasure and inner peace. She recorded them, expressed them, and shared them through her artwork - paintings, sculptures, portraits.

In 2007, she took a few classes with Leonid Gervitz and in 2008, entered the class of a great master of beautiful photorealistic art, Nelson Shanks, who taught her his clear and rational method of figure drawing. “Everyone can look but not everyone can see,” he would say. “It’s easier to cool down a strong color than to wake up a dead one…” In Spring of 2009 she was awarded the David Frederick Emerson Grant, to attend a prestigious Summer Intensive Portrait Course at Studio Incamminati, Nelson Shanks school, in Philadelphia. She kept on practicing her skills in the classes of remarkable artists and teachers such as Frank Porcu and Michael Grimaldi. In June 2011 she won the Adolf H. & Ada Aldrich Grant (Realism Category) for portraits.

CAROLINE BERGONZI shares herself between Manhattan and Monaco.