Ritratto 1, Valeria Patrizi - T.O.E. Art Market

“We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.” Clarissa Pinkola Estés, “Woman who Run with the Wolves”. Valeria Patrizi's artworks are as wild as the women described in the just quoted book, they are made of stains of pictorial material declined in calm tones that spread freely on the canvas marked by creases like a woman's face is marked by the wrinkles of time and lived experiences . The canvas is then ignited by the contrast with the fiery red of sensual lips, soft and juicy like a ripe cherry, while the coffee stains cover the scene with visual disturbances that make the female figures seem to float in undefined space and time. The protagonists of her artworks represent a rich, varied and yet incredibly coherent female universe. They share the intimate complicity of what it means “being a woman” and a delicate and ethereal beauty, distant in the eyes and very close to us in clothing. What Valeria Patrizi wants to do is not a simple portrait, she wants to capture the soul of these women. A soul that canvas after canvas becomes more and more wild.

Valeria Patrizi was born in 1979 in Rome, where she now lives and works. In 1999 she specialized in pictorial decoration at the Art Institute “I.S.A. Roma2” and in 2004 she graduated from the “Accademia di Belle Arti” in Rome (Nunzio Solendo’s Chair of Painting), after having attended for 6 months the “Facultad de Bellas Artes de Granada” (Spain). Graduated in Pictorial Restoration at the “Scuola di Restauro San Giacomo” of the Municipality of Rome, she began her artistic career by studying painting techniques and form through drawing and the study of anatomy. After a long study period of academic painting, she turns to a more essential and original pictorial dimension: in her large canvases, often exhibited without frames as if they were large tapestries, she uses coffee, tea and bitumen, seeking the balance of form through lines and stains. In constant search of a new and symbolic idea of ​​the human figure, she focuses on the woman’s image; the only one in which she can lose herself and find herself again. Valeria Patrizi is one of the most interesting contemporary Italian painters, in particular thanks to her sensitivity towards her female and animal subjects, with which the Roman artist establishes a deep connection. She arouses an increasing interest among the public and critics, therefore her prices are rising. The Italian painter is very active on Instagram, where she periodically posts her new works.