Orfèo proudly presents jewellery by Maria Rosa Franzin and Graziano Visintin along with paintings by Robi Gottlieb-Cahen
Maria Rosa Franzin – Brooch
Maria-Rosa Franzin: Jewels wearable thoughts
The body ornament is the visualisation of a thought, of states of mind, of sensations aroused by a painting, by music, by a particolar detail of reality.This is the definition suggested when one observes the jewellery created by Maria Rosa Franzin, artist and goldsmith, who received her training at the “Pietro Selvatico” Art Institute of Padua, where she also teaches “Progettazione Orafa (Goldsmith Planning and design).And it is thanks to her teaching commitment at the Pietro Selvatico for years the only school in Italy that has been active in the field of goldsmith research- that was stimulated to abandon her first passion, painting, and choose jewellery.
The change of medium, if, on the one hand required a new awareness of the problems involved in the design and realization of a wearable object, on the other hand has not changed the innate pictorial sensitivity of the artist. Indeed a firm pictorial approach distinguishes all Maria Rosa Franzin’s works, where it is possible to emphasize two principal lines of creative elaboration. The “screenjewel” is composed of gold and silver laminas on which the artist works with oxidation, sanding, engraving, filing, acid baths and inclusions in pure gold. On the surface of the jewel, therefore, emerge images. vision of sidereal space, of boundless territories and landscape, at times even succeeding in evoking expressions of sound, the whistling of the wind, the rustling of leaves.
The protagonist in the necklaces “Hartung” and “Lightness” is the thin steel wire, a graphical sign that infuses the jewels with a slight vibration and at the same time allows it to expand beyond its structural limits, creating a field of forces around the metal elements.
Catalogue : M.C.Bergesio
Maria Rosa Franzin – Brooch « blue moon »
Graziano Visintin : The geometry of gold
I studied the goldsmith’s art at the “Pietro Selvatico” Institute of Art in Padua, from 1968 to 1973, where I studied under Mario Pinton, Francesco Pavan and Giampaolo Babetto, in whose studio I worked for two years. I have been teaching Laboratory/Workshop Techniques at the same institute since 1976. At first, my works were configured as a reduction of shape and volume, where solids lose their mass yet preserving their outline. Primary geometrical elements such as squares, triangles, circles and ovals aligned, criss-crossed or superimposed, confronting the compactness of gold, an element that was never abandoned even when ebony and ivory were used.
Gold has always fascinated me. It is a precious material, not so much for its pecuniary value, but for its characteristics of workability (malleability and ductility) and therefore requires the utmost attention. In the eighties shapes were elongated, emptied, dematerialised to the point of becoming brilliant light. Double elements, criss-crossing traces of gold thread outline necklaces offering points of incidence and reverberation where light creates extraordinary effects.
Circles, squares, triangles are apparently simple elements, but I have been fascinated by them in trying to understand the expressive potential of primary shapes that are always different when observed with attention. The homogeneous continuity of the circle, confronting itself with its centre, recalls the processes of individuation; in the triangle the polarised disparity recalls the value of force and energy exerted in space. In the nineties I added a strong pictorial effect to my works. Niello, obtained by the fusion of silver, copper, lead, sulphur and borax, is an alloy that was well known by the Egyptians. Sometimes I use it as a colour or to contrast the splendid yellow of gold, and then they are beaten laminas, lozenges, trapeziums, that form compound elements.
The minimal absoluteness of shape almost creates writings on the object, and then enamel, made more unique and precious by thin, superimposed gold leaf, integrates with the laminas joined by small cubes that create geometrical relationships of logical, and rigorous design. Measure, equilibrium, simplicity but above all, vocation to geometry creates the quality of shape in apparently simple objects .
Graziano Visintin
Graziano Visintin – Rings
Graziano Visintin – brooch
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website: www.galerie-orfeo.com
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