Marianella Antonetti Art

 SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marianella Antonetti.

Marianella, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on September 23, 1964. I’m a Veterinary doctor and started the artistic inclination since 1988, in a ceramic workshop. My grandfather was a great artist, painter, sculptor and I loved every piece he made. He was my inspiration to start on this journey of art. After some years of free personal work in the molding area and experimenting with various materials, I started formal sculpture classes on 2014, using various techniques such as clay, fiberglass, plasticine, iron, papier Mache and carving in polyurethane foam. I started with tridimensional resin sculptures.

My first piece, molded in fiberglass at the beginning of June of that same year, was called “Resignation”, where I start to perfectly fit the emotions and translate them into the different pieces. This piece was followed by ¨Shock¨, both representing the two stages of mourning. From there, I created several pieces that highlight the movement, body expression and emotion implicit in each work. On July 2016, I moved to Miami and in October 2017, I began to participate in several exhibitions at the CVAP Gallery at Wynwood Art District, Miami, Florida; also participating in important international art fairs, such as the Art Palm Beach fair, Art Boca Raton, ICFF in New York, Art New York, Reveal Art Fair in Saratoga. Since January 2018, I decided to try with bidimensional sculptures, with laser cut aluminum and it seems to be my signature for a while.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My artwork is based on the need to express emotions; and for me, the joy of life is one of the most important things. The body language and the movement of the silhouettes are the main characteristics to transmit feelings in my work.
The series of trapeze artists, talk about courage to achieve our goals, our fears, overcome them with practice and dedication. “Kanda” borns from the emotions that the work of the great painter Wassily Kandinsky generates in me. I am also Veterinarian doctor; so, my character “Kanda” with her pets “Khan” & “Wassil”; shows our day by day, expressing always her love for life, for animals, for nature and outdoor living, and the interconnection between. It represents joy, freedom, color, and geometry.

But our emotions are not always of joy and gratitude … In recent months, when the crisis in my country, Venezuela, is getting worse and emigration is now the daily news, my feelings about my own exile begin to create greater empathy; not only with my nation but with all the people around the world who had to make the decision to leave their countries, their roots, family, friends, home and almost in all cases, the only luggage is a bag with important documents and a single change of clothes. I started reading about dictators, transmigrations, extermination, human rights violations by dictatorial regimes, repression and the common consequences for ordinary citizens. So, my needs as an artist changed and I feel at this moment the need to show the world the causes and consequences of these aberrations so that the world can feel compassion, mercy and help the refugees of all nations to have a better quality of life. About all this, will be my next show. I’m working on it right now.

Have things improved for artists? What should cities do to empower artists?
Is easier for us to express ourselves, because of the technology and the social networks, we have a way more information, materials, and tools. Maybe the best way to encourage and help our art is with city/county events where we can show our work, explaining what is it about. Remember that Art had always been designed to delight its audience with beautiful, magnificent works, perfectly carved or painted, for example. But for several years now, the role of artists has been changing. Contemporary art allows us to express ourselves freely, denounce situations, show the world realities unknown to many people or create the empathy of those outside that situations, historical moments reflected and interpreted through a work of art. Now us, with our art are very important instruments as a voice of peace, knowledge, reflections, acceptance of one another …

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Usually, my shows are in the Curator’s Voice Art projects Gallery, now at Little River, Miami.
Everybody can see my artwork on my Instagram account @marianellaantonettiesculturas, on Facebook: Marianella Antonetti Esculturas, on my website https://marianellaantonetti.com/ 

I also publish the different shows where my artwork participates, on this social apps. I do have a lot of my pieces in my workshop in Doral, Florida, so people can see it there too. People can support my artwork with their assistance to my shows, contacting me when feeling interested in one of my pieces and following, commenting and sharing the posts of my accounts.

Contact Info:

• Address: Doral, Fl
• Website: https://marianellaantonetti.com/
• Phone: 7868577303
• Email: marianella.antonetti@gmail.com
• Instagram: marianellaantonettiesculturas
• Facebook: Marianella Antonetti Esculturas

Estefanía Rosales Coronel | redaccion5@construarte.com.ve

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL)

Marianella Antonetti: Art strips me of sleep

Admiring Kandinsky, Picasso, and Van Gogh; Marianella Antonetti comes from a family of artists. His maternal grandfather was a sculptor, her mother painted and one of her aunts had a ceramics workshop, which aroused early concern for artistic creation.

"I loved what my grandfather, my mother and my aunt did, I always wanted to do my own creations and I was looking for a way to do it", recalls the artist about her beginnings.

Veterinary Profession, she has been on the path of art as a sculptor for four years. In 2014, the laboratory of veterinary medicine for which she worked, made a reduction of personnel forced by the Venezuelan economic crisis and this was the turn that impelled Antonetti to devote herself formally to the artistic creation.

"I have had the opportunity to connect with this which is my other passion" says Antonetti "Animals are my first passion and art and sculpture are my second great passion".

Emotions as axis

In 2014, she was looking for a school to take sculpture lessons, and found the workshop of the sculptor Eleonora Tugues, one block from her home in Caracas. Six weeks after she started classes there, Antonetti's mother dies.

From that mixture of emotions due to the loss of her mother figure, the first sculpture of the artist emerges: Resignation. "My teacher made a wire frame with a human figure and told me: give it the shape you want, give it the emotion you want," she recalls. That piece is part of the stages of mourning.

Antonetti believes in the power of art -in her case of sculpture- to transmit emotions and make people vibrate those who contemplate a work of art; to create empathy with people and to feel sadness, fear, joy in one piece.

"The main theme in all my sculptures is emotions," says the artist. Kanda, one of the sculptor's most recent works, was inspired by the painter Wassily Kandinsky and is the product of an introspection about how she feels about the artist's work: joy, freedom, color.

"Art for me is the oasis of the soul ... it is the space where the senses and the soul works best and connect" she reflects. "It is the invisible link that unites the artist with hundreds or thousands of people, and for the artist, it is the purest expression of his essence".

Saint Francis of Assisi

Her veterinary career and her artistic career have been two separate realities during much of Antonetti's life. Being a student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) in Maracay, she traveled to Caracas on weekends and visited her aunt's pottery workshop.

However, after her graduation in 1993, her professional vocation was a practically exclusive dedication to the clinic and her first life mission: saving the lives of animals that needed with her knowledge as a veterinarian.

Until a few years ago, when those who called her two passions met. The director of the bioterium of the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences of the Universidad Central de Venezuela made a telephone call that resulted in the creation of a very special work for her.

"I had the honor of being chosen to make the image of Saint Francis of Assisi for my university," she relates with emotion, "I think it has been the only connection that has been in terms of the two professions."

Like art, the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi - patron of animals and veterinarians - has been present in the life of Antonetti from an early age. Her father read "The motives of the wolf", a poem by Rubén Darío, dedicated to the saint.

"I was always passionate about that character, and when I started to mold it, it was like I was interpreting what he had meant to me," she says. "The people who saw him had their eyes watering or a smile was drawn in. I managed to convey what I wanted, which was that peace, that joy, humility and sensitivity to those most in need."

A way to go

In the artistic work of Antonetti, emotions and the human figure occupy a leading role. Likewise, she confesses, that at some point she would like to do something related to animals. "I have so many ideas that I do not know where to start."

She tells that her creative process starts with the imagination and visualization of the piece, followed by a sketch of the sculpture she wants to make, then molds with plasticine until she reaches a final version in resin. Throughout the stages, the piece can be modified while performing it, due to its own internal changes.

-What would you say are your challenges as an artist?

My challenges as an artist are those that I impose on myself. Art takes away my sleep. So many ideas come to my mind that sometimes I do not sleep! My challenge is to capture in a piece what motivated me to do it or the emotion I want people to perceive. I think that my great challenge is that when I finish each piece, it awakens the emotion in those who see it.