COMEL AWARD FINALISTS 2012

Ornella Boccuzzi

Sabaudia – ITALY

THE COMEL AWARD FINALISTS 2012

Ornella Boccuzzi

Sabaudia - ITALY
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

She graduated with top marks in sculpture under the guidance of Master Emilio Greco at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Her artistic journey began in 1975, but she continued to develop her skills. In 1978, she prepared a thesis on Pre-Columbian sculpture titled "Mesoamerican Civilizations" with Cesare Vivaldi. The following year, she studied painting with Alberto Ziveri and concurrently took an engraving course with Ciarrocchi. She also received valuable advice from Manzù. In the early '80s, she delved into the plastic-pictorial experience of ceramics with Anna Mileto.

She is a founding member of the Visual Arts group "Il Melograno," through which she organizes workshops for painting animation in the province of Latina, engraving courses, exhibitions, and events.

She has exhibited her works throughout Italy and also abroad, particularly in Bulgaria and France. Until September 2021, she was a teacher of Plastic Arts at the State Artistic High School "Michelangelo Buonarroti" in Latina. Currently, she lives and works in Latina.

ARTWORK IN CONTEST

VANNA, 2012

Sculpture - clay and aluminum
cm 88 x 32 x 15

Ornella Boccuzzi chooses the path of commemoration, celebrating the memory of a woman from the moment of her birth: a large letter V, the initial of the word 'Vanna', becomes the ideal frame (in the Platonic sense of the term), both material and immaterial, real and mental at the same time, of the figure of a woman who, as molded from the earth (clay), has a genesis that draws from the sacred books of the Judeo-Christian tradition. An artwork that aims, desires, and aspires to be 'important' and, at first analysis, seems to seek glory and recognition, proudly but without arrogance, inserting itself into the groove of history and classical tradition. Indeed, in both symbolic references and iconography, Boccuzzi clearly looks to tradition, yet at the same time, she traverses it with daring, to use a neologism, taking a bold risk as an artist in the chromatic choice: the aluminum plate on which the female sculpture is placed is boldly blue, creating a daring contrast between the parts. The electric blue is a modern color (first mentioned in 1884 in England), bold, 'pushed', but it is also the color of the Aquarius sign. Furthermore, it should be noted that historically blue is the color of depth, the feminine principle of waters, meditation, intellect, revelation, the veil of the Virgin, or Christ's mantle. Boccuzzi's artwork is undoubtedly an altar, a sacred place dedicated to worship, prayer, and meditation, which, however, dispenses with the monumental dimension, choosing the path of silent and collected remembrance, clear and composed, intimate, and spiritual.

"I wanted to fuse the two elements, aluminum with its resistance, lightness, and ductility, and clay as an expression of art, beauty, and poetry, both as fragile as life itself, which always remains immeasurable," writes the artist, narrating the long process that led her to conceive this work in which, step by step, gesture after gesture, the celebratory dimension gives way to the emotional one, transforming commemoration into tenderness, glory into a loving caress.

AWARDS

COMEL AWARD FINALIST 2012