Patrizia Genovesi

• Comment: While it is obvious that her statements are 'quotes', to comply with policy they must be specifically 'quoted' and attributed to the publications where she made those statements. Revent^talk 04:21, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

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Patrizia Genovesi is an Italian photographer and video artist. She was born in 1962 in Milano.

Genovesi couples a scientific education with an eclectic artistic sensibility. In photography, she had Leonard Freed, Richard Kalvar, Moises Saman and Abbas of the Magnum Photos agency among her teachers. She also studied drawing and painting, music execution and composition, plus other abilities like screenwriting with cinema director Mario Monicelli, writing with Domenico Starnone, and theater direction with Argentinian theatre specialist Renzo Casali.

Her work is characterized by a continuous search for quality of the image and the equilibrium of the composition, deeply influenced by the best Italian painting tradition. In addition, Genovesi is fascinated with technology and the search for contamination and expression synergies between different arts.

Genovesi’s photographs of Nobel Prize laureates, including Rita Levi-Montalcini, John Nash, Richard Ernst, Robert Mundell, and Frank Wilczeck have been published by the Nobel Prize Organization. Her portrait of Mrs. Levi-Montalcini was exhibited in Kamienna Gora, Poland, during the celebrations for the Nobel Prize laureate Victor Hamburger. Her portraits of photographer Leonard Freed are part of the permanent collection of the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium.

Personal exhibitions

• Mondadori – Roma (2003)
• Mondadori – Milano (2004)
• Tempio di Dioniso al Quirinale – Roma (2005)
• Torretta Valadier – Roma (2006)
• Auditorium Parco della Musica di Roma, Notebook – Roma (2007)
• Universita’ Roma 3 – Roma (2007)
• Estate Romana – Roma (2008)
• Balletti Palace Hotel for Mensa IBD – San Martino al Cimino, Viterbo (2008)
• Aeroporto Internazionale della Malpensa – Milano (2008-2009)
• Biblioteca Vallicelliana – Roma (2009)
• Circolo del Ministero degli Affari Esteri – Roma (2010)
• Circolo del Ministero della Marina Militare – Roma (2011)
• Istituto Italiano di Cultura – Budapest (2011)
• Circolo del Ministero degli Affari Esteri – Roma (2013)

Collective exhibitions

• Palazzo Bastogi – Firenze (2012)
• Festa della Cultura – Roma (2013)
• Grenning Gallery – New York (2012)

Selected Projects

• Giuseppe Verdi’s Women was exhibited in 2013 at the Club of Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Rome, Italy. It focuses on the Italian composer’s feminine characters and the force, vitality, suffering and action that so strongly distinguish them from the languid, pure, devoted-to-sacrifice romantic stereotype. The project is composed of a wide number of large-size, mostly black and white pictures and a set of videos realized as long-shot sequences of models interpreting La Traviata’s Violetta, Macbeth’s wife, Attila’s Odabella, Aida, Jeanne D’Arc, Il Trovatore’s Azucena, and others.

• Art and Science was first exhibited in 2010 at the Club of Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Rome, Italy, and subsequently at the Club of Italian Ministry for Mercantile Marine, Rome, Italy and at the Institute of Italian Culture in Budapest, Hungary, both in 2011. It is comprised of a gallery of black and white portraits of world-renowned scientists, including Nobel Prize and Fields Medal or other prize winners Rita Levi Montalcini, Andrew Wiles, John Nash Richard Ernst, Edward Witten, Benoît Mandelbrot, and Douglas Hofstadter. With the collaboration of technology expert Corrado Giustozzi, excepts from the portrayed scientist’s works were hidden among the pictures’ pixels, so as to artistically emphasize the link between the thinker and the thought.

• Painters was exhibited in 2012 at the Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbour, New York, USA. It is comprised of color portraits of painters of the Florence Academy in their working studios, where they appear not simply as the principal subjects of the composition, but rather as integral parts of it, and their work is not just surrounding them but actually flowing from them. In order for the pictures to be consistent with the kind of art the painters made, Genovesi used color palettes similar to theirs, used the light they worked in (nothing artificial), and mirrored some of their subjects — still life compositions recalling their set-ups, portraits inspired by their own self-portraits, and country landscapes similar to those they paint.

• Coriolan was first exhibited at the International Malpensa Airport, Milano, Italy between 2008 and 2009 and subsequently at the Vallicelliana Library in Rome, Italy, in 2009. It is composed of a gallery of frames from Genovesi’s black and white video of orchestra conductor Giorgio Proietti executing the famous overture by Ludwig van Beethoven. The conductor’s gesture and posture show the conductor being involved by the music to the point that he is intimately transformed into Coriolan, a Roman leader exiled from his home city, a commander driving his soldiers to the combat, and a man lacerated by contrasting feelings that will finally lead him to death.

• Cinema’s People was exhibited at the Auditorium Della Musica Notebook, Rome, in 2007. It is composed of a gallery of black and white portraits of cinema directors, actors and art directors, including Vincenzo Cerami, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Stefania Sandrelli, and others.

Genovesi’s concepts about photography

• According to Genovesi, Photography should in principle catch something that the eyes can see. The challenge for a photographer is to grasp moments in which the reality shows itself in a special manner, and to return them into a picture. Her ability is to draw the maximum from the capabilities of her camera by leveraging a profound, interiorized knowledge of optics and image composition techniques. Consistently, Genovesi is not a fan of post-production, that she uses to a very limited extent.

• Why is the black & white so telling, why is it considered so expressive, even if the world we experience is in colors? Genovesi's answers draws from the theory of color: white is the presence of all colors, black is their absence, and grey is their mixture. A black & white image is the result of countless nuances of grey, that is combinations of blacks and whites, presence and absence, just like our daily experience is a thread of countless moments where life (and its associations like happiness) is combined and contrasted with death (and its associations like unhappiness). Nothing in life is completely black or white; everything is a varying nuance of grey. The black & white is so telling because it speaks to us of our life.

• The following statements have been published on Genovesi's website :
  • Black and white photography is light, contrast and rhythm. When I shoot in black and white I try to identify the tonal passages, the amount of light contained in the individual colors. I often observe how the light reflects on the different materials and compose the shot emphasize the lines of force of the shot. I love the narrative ability of black and white which is a stylistic choice that I make when I want to tell only the fact.When the color is stripped away, only the skeleton of the story remains.
  • The graphics and prospective create the rhythm of the image, that is evidenced by the alternation of full and empty spaces, from serialism, by geometric shapes.The rhythm is in the brain of man, not in his eyes. It is not mere exposure of seriality. This I think. It is not very different from the sound rhythm. The concept is similar.The rhythm goes first sensed and then seen. I often observe structures, that I rationalize at the time of picture composition.The directionality of the look is a fundamental element that gives meaning to photography, and is the element around which I create my compositional rhythm.
  • Photography documents the reality and announces the possibility, reveals stories of life and visually describes virtual worlds. It proposes itself as a powerful means for investigating the amazing discovery that unites time and space in a unique, real perspective.

External links

• www.patriziagenovesi.com

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