About artist
Giò Stefan stage name of Giovanna Stefanutti. Painter born in Treviso whose training as an architect and experience in the field of interior design have marked her style of painting, together with the curiosity and interest that - since she was a child - have tirelessly accompanied her in her studies.
A passionate reader of the Corriere dei Ragazzi, Giò Stefan was already at an early age fascinated by the synthetic rendering of images characterized by shadows and chiaroscuro contrasts that became the protagonists of a fluid and dynamic space; however, she was also attracted by the stories told, in which the characters found themselves living fantastic adventures within precise and recognizable historical contexts as in a sort of "painted literature".
It was in 2000 that the Venetian artist found herself literally conquered by the enigmatic beauty of the portraits of the famous Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka, beginning to propose to her clients (including many private individuals) to personalize and make the home "warmer" by portraying them with the concept that they were always present even when absent. This is how Giò Stefan refined his oil representation technique, using a small number of colors and luminous tones together with decisive chromatic contrasts. For her, color is a furnishing element and the prevailing color must be combined with the color of the space in which the work of art will be placed.
It should be noted that Gio Stefan is passionate about auteur cinema, a collector of vintage films, from Alfred Hitchcock to William Wyler and Federico Fellini, from Tim Burton to Wes Anderson, so much so that many icons of retro cinema become the central focus of many of her paintings in order to revive the elegant irony of every historical era forgotten due to commercial logic and yet not in the nostalgic unconscious of collective memory. Pictorial tributes to Hollywood celebrities, from the '40s to the '70s, a historical period in which mystery was as important in life as in art.
Lately, Giò Stefan - in addition to portraits of people - has made paintings of cars and motorcycles set in different urban contexts. The new theme of metropolitan landscapes, within which are recognizable some well-known personalities from the world of music and entertainment, want to portray the soul of places as for the painter from Treviso <<Places are not simple portions of space, in which the actions of man take place: they are the echo of the passage of centuries, in the stratifications of human history. Like people, even places welcome or reject them, making people feel like inhabitants or foreigners. In these last series, inspired by the poetics of pop art and mediated by the Futurist attraction for speed and machines, the vehicles acquire a great deal of space to the point of telling the contemporary in their silence as suspended and abstract.
Among the various collective exhibitions in Treviso there is the Reggio Emilia Art Fair in 2015 and the Padua Art Fair in both 2016 and 2017; the Rome Art Fair in 2018 and the Expo - Virtual Gallery in Rome, Via Condotti, in November 2020. Among the solo exhibitions are "Cineritratti" at the Archeide di Treviso in 2016, "Lui e lei al cinema" at Palazzo Cornoldi in Venice in 2017, and "Oltre la via della seta" at Villa Farsetti in Venice and "Multicromie" at the Art Gallery Il Cantiere di Treviso, both in 2019.
Finally, among Giò Stefani's publications, the Annuario d'Arte Contemporanea for Acca Edizioni, from 2015 to 2019, and the Catalogue "Oltre le vie della seta" such as the aforementioned Personali d'Arte Contemporanea at Villa Farsetti last year deserve special mention.