ELISA BERTAGLIA_Rovigo, 1983

Elisa Bertaglia is an Italian visual artist.

She studied at Venice Academy of Fine Arts under Carlo Di Raco; she graduated in painting at the first level in 2006 and at the second level painting in 2009 with distinction. In 2008 she collaborated with Riccardo Caldura curating Devozioni Domestiche – a group show for Contemporaneo Gallery, in Mestre, Italy –, also writing an essay for the exhibition catalogue. In 2009 she won a scholarship for painting in Carlo Di Raco’s Painting Atelier at Venice Academy of Fine Arts.

In April 2011 she was selected to exhibit Populus III, a series of drawings and paintings on paper, at 54ma Venice Biennaleat the Academy Pavilion.

From 2009 until today her work has been selected and mentioned for various awards, and several articles have been written about her work. Elisa Bertaglia participates in solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad.

In Elisa Bertaglia’s artistic research, the world of unconscious, nature, duality and memory, is represented through a  miscellaneous approach, made of series of small and large-scale paintings and drawings on paper, wood or canvas, wall drawings, small installations and site-specific projects. Resolutely avoiding an illustrative approach, the influence of literature, such as the Classics or novels by contemporary writers (Maurizio Maggiani, Patricia Higsmith, Cornelius Eady, Han Kang), and cinema (Patrice Leconte, Bernardo Bertolucci, Kim Ki-Duk), open the artist’s work to several layers of interpretation. Through a philosophical approach and an oneiric and symbolic language, the artist portrays a rich vocabulary of plants, animals and children, fully immersed into imaginary, but possible,  landscapes. Bertaglia investigates the concept of threshold as a metamorphosis, difficult and necessary to the search and the development of the identity: vertebras and fish skulls, roots and intertwined leaflets, children and wild beasts, hanging in the empty space or bound on branches of carnivorous plants, are symbols of the short circuit in the complex compendium of rituals and rules that celebrate the natural passage between non-consciousness and consciousness.