Icons of Art. A gallery of mosaic portraits
In Spilimbergo a gallery of mosaic portraits.
The Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli hosts, at the same time as its annual Mosaico&Mosaici exhibition, the exhibition Volti musivi: Icons of art (Mosaic faces: Icons of art), a gallery of portraits of famous people executed in mosaic by students of the School.
Exhibited inside the Gallery of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, in the former SOMSI building on Viale Barbacane, the mosaic works are interspersed with photographic images that propose other portraits, always executed in mosaic: the high resolution and the quality of the reproduction make the care and detail of the workmanship to convey the physiognomy and character of the characters depicted is even more evident.
This series of mosaic portraits originates from a multi-year project curated by the Naonis Cultural Association in collaboration with the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli. This is a competition aimed at students of the School entitled Mosaic Young Talent where they are asked to interpret the face of a person known to the general public through mosaic. In the various editions, under the coordination of Guglielmo Zanette, artistic director of the Competition, the following were depicted as follows: Silvester Stallone, Leonardo Di Caprio, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson, Audrey Hepburn, Bruce Lee, Katy Perry, Julia Roberts, Frida Kahlo, Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, Steve Jobs and the list of singers, actors, athletes, entrepreneurs, artists… could continue. This is a continually growing repertoire, presented primarily in Pordenone, the city where the Naonis Association is based, but also in other places, among which it is worth mentioning the tour in various cities in the United States, with always accompanied exhibitions from valuable illustrated catalogues.
For the students of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, this is an opportunity to test their skills and try their hand at a genre that is explored in depth in the training programs between the second and third courses. The students are asked to take into account the physiognomy of the faces, the expressions and the character of the characters. Even though they take an image as a model, they move independently in the choice of materials, in the rendering of facial features, in the simplification of the design for the mosaic translation. A freedom that nevertheless finds strong foundations and points of reference in the teachers of the School who are always available for discussion and advice.
To the already rich series, this year the mosaic portrait of the actor Johnny Depp in the role of the pirate Jack Sparrow was added, created by Erika Fantin who was the winner of the Mosaic Young Talent Award for the year 2024.
Like the Mosaico&Mosaici exhibition, set up within the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli to present the best of the mosaic works, projects and research developed during the 2023/2024 training year, the collateral exhibition Volti musivi: Icons of art can be visited by all the days from 10.00 to 12.30 and from 16.30 to 20.00, until 25 August 2024.
August 2, 2024
