Vera Bugatti: A rare example of modern passion
The Ephemeral Art of a Madonnara who travels the world with her talent.
Vera Bugatti, a skilled artist in her technique, which makes her theprotagonist on the tarmac, plays a craft built solely on her great identityof “madonnara”. She paints with a smile and chalk, remaining bent withthe knees on the ground for hours and days until the completion of herdrawing. Peregrinating, according to the tradition of the highest expressionof the poor and spontaneous art, strongly rooted in our folk andreligious memory, she colours the streets of the world, allowing viewersto be amazed at her great figurative talent.
Frau mit Hund (detail), Wilhelmshaven International Street Art Fest, Germany 2011. (3,3×2 m)
Generally, in this ephemeral context of art and beauty, the chalkdrawing still expresses an immediate and effective code,intended to involve the heterogeneous and sensitiveaudience who still admires the works painted on theroad as essential parts of a “carpet of honour”,which predisposes itself to the solemn passageand the trampling of a sacred procession. Thegenesis of the image is therefore a demonstrationof “live painting”, consumedin front of the audience during theperformance of singular representationsdestined to dissolve,fading away and then vanish withthe first rain. Over the past few years,however, the images of the amazingworks during folk festivals that recur both inItaly and abroad, reach a wide audience thanksto the modern social communications media, withthe aim to perpetuate a gesture that is even exclusivelyauthentic and characterized by spontaneous andparticipatory reality during the course of its fulfilment.
Vera Bugatti, a young librarian in Brescia,chases, expresses and spreads internationally thecharm of this world made of chalk and asphalt.
Having devoted her education to the humanistic sphere,specializing in the care of libraries and book editions ofthe sixteenth century, she has cultivated for several yearsa deep knowledge of the literature of the sixteenth century,and from this wealth of science, poetry and memory relativeto the Treaties she draws inspiration for her works, actualizingthe expressive concerns of of Mannerism and interpretingour time with the artifice of a mutable figurative movement, animated bythe vigour of a free expressive language.
In Curtatone, a Municipality that has represented since forty years theplace of the annual event of the National Madonnari Meeting, VeraBugatti discovers a new way to externalize her art as an exclusiveexpression of her intimate visions.
Big Brother continues to watch You, anamorphic pavement art, Sliema International Street Art Fest , Malta 2014 (4×4 m)
In this same festival, in 2010, she fulfils her deep relationship with theasphalt, which she lives as a “canvas for her art,” and that she provesto dominate through an innate sensitivity for the creation of her work,winning the Bronze Medal as a “Master Madonnaro.” Subsequently,the artist firstly intervenes in popular demonstrations and contests inpartnership and cooperation with accredited writers of various Italianand European realities, and then – in a short time – she is selected toparticipate in the American event Sarasota Chalk Festival 2012 with aninternational team of 13 streetpainters, involved in construction of amammoth anamorphic work, that animated the painting with elephants,tigers and lions, under the direction of Kurt Wenner, the artist andarchitect who began painting in Italy, in Rome, in 1982, after beinginspired by frescos and sculptures of the Renaissance, and who’s knownthroughout the world for his dazzling masterpieces that deceive thehuman eye thanks to the perception of an extraordinary scene thatcomes to life only when viewed from a specific point of view.
Die Erzähler Geldern Straßenmaler Fest, Germany 2013. (3,7×3,2 m).
The craft of pavement artist “with hat”,already present in Europe since thesixteenth century as a spectacularreproducer of images, first sacred,on roads, sidewalks, cement andpavement of urban centres,thus discovers a moderninterpretation accessibleand new through the workof Vera Bugatti, which movesaway from the usual representationof sacred themes discoveringnew visual interpretations and newiconic forms for the narrative of the elegyof her time, thus describing a movementthat translates the expression of image in aconstant striving towards mass communicationand towards the participation of the large public.
So, Vera tells her stories and her mhyths through a great sensitivity,that comes to life on the basis of an innate gift, cultivatedonly by her passion; her “theatre” sees her in the humblegesture of being bent for hours, her shoulders turned to anaudience amazed by her secure gestures, that configuresworks of exorbitant size and intense communicative power.Close to the techniques of “Madonnari art” of the eighties,she experiments, particularly in her 2D realizations, thetechnique of hatching that, like in Divisionism, builds penetrating,artificial and spectacular colours, sometimes emphasized because ofthe use of a bold perspective of anamorphosis, that in these moderntrompe-l’oeil times is exalted in the eyes of the viewer, in the astoundingillusion of the depth of real field. The artist loves every colour, but sheprefers the use of black, yellow, green for the complexion and of whitefor light shots. Inspired by the cornerstone of literature of the sixteenthcentury, she leads and dares the free exercise of the imagination in thescenario of utopian memory, drawing her inspiration from the roots ofthe styles of the classical, northern and eastern world that find heretheir unique, eclectic and organic combination within a magical anddreamlike bursting scenery.
07.07.2014, Elena Cecchini
RECENT STREET ART PROJECTS (SUMMER 2014):
- Wicklow Arts Festival, Ireland – May 14/15
- Almere Street Art Fest, Netherlands – June 21/22
- Blumberg Street Art Festival, Germany – July 12/13
- Add More Colors Festival, Silema, Malta – July 18/20
- Sögel International Street Art Festival, Germany – July 26/27
- Wilhelmshaven International Street Art Festival, Germany – August 2/3
- Asphalt Oasen Street Art Fest, Graz, Austria – August 7/9
- Incontro Nazionale dei Madonnari, Grazie di Curtatone (MN), Italy – August 14/15
- World Streetpainting Festival Arnhem, Netherlands – September 18/20