Biography

Gina Mariotto

She was born in Caracas, Venezuela. At first she studied advertising as a career at IUNP, Instituto Universitario de Nuevas Profesiones (University Institute for New Professions) in Caracas, Venezuela; later on began studying art at IED, Istituto Europeo di Design (European Institute of Design) in Rome, Italy. Following, she fully developed as an artist in Vienna, Austria, where she lived for seven years. She has represented Venezuela in the Human Unitas organization, and her work has been part of the world tour of this entity. She is also a member of the Forum Stadtpark (Multicultural City Park Forum) in Graz, Austria.

Gina Mariotto’s work represents a colorful explosion of sensations inspired by sheer children’s creativity. By making use of figurative and abstract expressions, her paintings display different characters reflected from her childhood, whose gestures inject into them puppet-like life. Thus, puppet heroes, villains, mythological and everyday leaders began appearing on large canvases. She refers to such characters in these terms: “all of those who fit before and after colors and gestures and are filling out my own house which is also my workshop”.

“Same as the line represents the distance between two points” says Gina, “so is life” just the distance traveled between two points. This venezuelan artist shows us a lot of lines, makes us partakers of their color, her blue, which she calls “Gina blue”.

This particular blue, however, does not want to be trendy, colors next to each other, differ as if they were well engineered structures through which to meet her interspersed items, texts, poems that do not take us away rom the explosion of colors.

Gina is called, appropriately, the “shaman of color” her work has a close correlation between abstract and figurative, a geometrization of the abstract that makes us rethink incomplete inner images in dreams or, perhaps, takes us to our own dimension, to that “primitive” element that exists in everyone.

Words are not Gina Mariotto’s strength, we dare to say that they are almost her negation, as if she would not wish to speak. For her, this is not a new aspect, as a child, she preferred the brush, the colors, the charcoal, the pencil, the paper, the canvas. So, step by step, she recognized in herself the desire to bring into being her interior creative restlessness through the plastic, to seek her own way of expressing through painting and designing the intensity of shaping without having to speak: her works speak for her.

"l paint my feelings, my inquietudes, because i can not express in words. In my work you can read my life. My feelings are reflected in the painting and how these impact on my acts and actions. These manifest steadily in the structure and disposition of my works. And it is so that i can connect the essential aspect of what I express with the reflections of my heart: here is the relationship i have with the outside world.
"

If we trace the artistic development of Gina, we have to refer to Cecilia Ortiz, her aunt, who first introduced her in this world. Cecilia, always surrounded by artists and intellectuals, was the door to creativity, at her place she created the first puppets together with her brothers, there she received her first brush wrapped in words of poetry, there she began to illustrate books of art and there, again, she experienced the first approach to Paul Klee.

With the arrival in Europe, however, takes form that which originally was her focus. Between the two continents, takes place her artistic education and the learning of a technique that alternates between personal and collective, a style, one color and another, always drawing on the wealth of knowledge learned from her two memorable teachers: Jesús Caviglia y Luis Villamizar.

– Translation: Principessa Anna Massimo

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibition

2019
Gattinoni Couture Fashion Show Collaboration – Roma, Italy
Museo Macro – Roma, Italy

2018
Gallery Gewebe – Vienna, Austria

2017
International institute for Peace (Book Launch event) – Vienna, Austria

2016
Trashart, Vienna – Austria

2015
Molfetta, Chiesa della Morte – Italy

2013 & 2014
Gallery Trashart – Vienna, Austria

2012
Artgallery – Miami , USA

2011
Sala Templari – Molfetta, Italy

2010
Genevieve Gallery  – Los Angeles, USA

2009
Aspecta Assicurazione – Vienna, Austria

2008
Sala  Europa – Vienna, Austria

2007
Monocromo – Roma, Italy

2006
Launching of  “Una Semplice Cosa”Roma, Italy

2005
Bosi Art Gallery – Rome, Italy

2003
Gallery Baroque – Graz, Austria

1999
Gallery Il Selvaggio – Roma, Italy

1998
International Fair – Hamburg, Germany
Institute Jugendkunst – Hamburg, Germany
Gallery Gerestorfer – Salzburg, Austria
Spa Blumau, Hundertwasser Gallery – Blumau, Austria
Cultural Center Kainach – Kainach, Austria
Papessa Gallery – Vienna, Austria

1997
Nue Gallery – Graz, Austria
Aspecta Versicherung – Vienna, Austria

1996
Austrian Chamber of Commerce – Voitsberg, Austria

1995
Plastic Gallery Pfarrhof, University of Vienna – Austria
Club Margaretesbad – Graz, Austria
Gallery Studio 4 Art – Milano, Italy

1994
Gallery Ghelfi – Verona, Italy
Raiffeisenbank Voitbert – Austria
Raiffeisenbank Köflach – Austria

Group Exhibitions

2022
Galeria Azur, Madrid – Spain

2016
Trashart, Vienna – Austria

2015
Galería Trashart – Viena
Molfetta, Sala Dei Templari – Italy

2011
Molfetta, Sala Dei Templari – Italy

2007
Beyond the unveiled Frontier – Los Angeles, USA
Museo de Bellas Artes – Caracas, Venezuela
Museo Aragua – Maracay, Venezuela
Bosi Artes – Roma, Italy

2005
Arte expo – New York, USA
Mi Arte – Milano,  Italy

2004
Expo Arte – Philadelphia, USA
Feria Iberoamericana del Arte – Venezuela
Expo Arte – Bari, Italy
Arte Fiera – Padova, Italy
Gallery EXPO-MIX – Caracas, Venezuela
“Venezuelan Artists Group” – Caracas, Venezuela
Foire de Paris – Paris, France Meeting of Artists:
France – Austria – Netherlands

2003
Gallery Planet – Vienna, Austria
Gallery La Fuente de Arte – San José, Costa Rica
Bosi Arte – Roma
Genevieve – Los Angeles, USA

2002
Feria Iberoamericana del Arte – Venezuela

2001
Sains Gems Cavalliet – Valletta, Malta
Collective exhibition “Cuba-Venezuela Meeting” – Vienna, Austria
“Entre mujeres 2” Latin American Institute – Vienna, Austria
Gallery Nora Riera de Bueno – Caracas, Venezuela

1999
United Nations Opera Collective – Vienna, Austria
Gallery Salzgries – Austria

1999
Gallery Freites – Caracas, Venezuela
Galeria 64 – Caracas, Venezuela

1995
Latin American Center File – Vienna, Austria
Fair –Prague -Austria “Group of Plastic Arts”

1994
Milan Fair 1994
Cultural Center of Graz – Austria
Greisenegg Castle – Austria

Awards

1st Prize
Art Hall Sacred Museum – Caracas, Venezuela

1st Prize
Gallery Cosmos “Time does not resist” – San Juan – Puerto Rico

ICEP Charity auction. OFID – The OPEC Fund for International Development. 2015

2nd Prize
Identified with Paul Klee (UNICEF) – New York – USA

Accreditations
Salón Aragua: “The four faces of Jesus Christ” – Venezuela