Gotthard
Bonell
Gotthard Bonell is a figurative-oriented painter, particularly active as a portrait painter. He was influenced both by historical models (Andrea Mantegna, Tiziano, Lorenzo Lotto) and by the twentieth-century portraits of Felice Casorati and by the work of some South Tyrolean artists such as Albin Egger-Lienz, Ignaz Stolz and Ernst Nepo.
Bonell is bound to the art of the past and to tradition in two ways: on the one hand, through his study and nude, still life and landscape, to which the artist always attaches considerable importance, but never eschews his own personal interpretation. In his work there is a dialectic of intelligence and feeling, a look at reality whose character is sensistic and melancholic. The landscape becomes reality. The body (of things) has a fertile vitality, but they are at the same time documents of decomposition and death. A skilled portrait painter, today Bonell is one of the few who is able to reformulate the tension between portrait and portraitist, transforming it into interpretative capital. His still lifes speak for themselves. Robert Mapplethorpe has considered flowers and fruits as an expression of the plant's sexuality and Bonell shares its obsessive gaze, its erotic obsessions. If in the portraits of his friends - painters, writers and composers - a tension emerges between intelligence (also knowledge of the artistic contributions of the past) and overflowing feeling, a culminating moment on an emotional level, here is that human participation, but at the same time also the detached gaze, is an important engine of restlessness, a tension that is felt first and foremost in the drawings, or in that most direct form of artistic practice and seismography.
Peter Weiermair
Biography
Gotthard Bonell was born in Trodena (I) in 1953. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, he graduated from the Brera Academy in Milan. In 1980-81 he was assistant at the Internationale Sommerakademie in Salzburg and, since 1985, studied singing at the Claudio Monteverdi Conservatory in Bolzano. He took part in numerous exhibitions in Italy, Austria and Germany and dedicated himself to writing various texts, including Hautgrenze, Inszenierung und Verwandlung - Immagine della penombra and Rituale. He currently lives and works in Trodena, Bolzano (I).
Exhibitions
He has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, mainly between Italy, Austria and Germany, including:
2024
Lichtschatten - Schattenlicht, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art - Diether Kunerth (D)
2023
Theatre of Josefstadt. Stage project "God" by Ferdinand von Schirach, Vienna (A)
2022
Diocesan museum of Bressanone (I)
2021
Terre di mezzo / Zwischenwelten, Gallery Alessandro Casciaro, Bolzano (I)
2019
Galerie Lanserhaus, Appiano (BZ)
2017
Schloß Tirol, Meran (I) with Lois Anvidalfarei
2016
Palazzo Trentini, Trento (I)
2013
Galleria Goethe
Galleria Civica di Bressanone (I)
2012
Schubertturm, Vienna (A)
2008
Messner Mountainmuseum (I)
Museo Diocesano di Bressanone (I)
Innen-Außen, Galleria Goethe, Bolzano (I)
2005
Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum Innsbruck (A)
Galerie Seywald, Salzburg (A)
2003
Portraits, Galleria Prisma, Bolzano (I)
German Russian House, Moscow (RU)
2002
Kupferstichkabinett, Akademie der bildenden Künste of Vienna (A)
1997
Schubertiade Feldkirch Montforthaus (A)
Galleria Goethe, Bolzano (I)
Among the group exhibitions we remember:
2016
Collaboration with the Sgarbi Project in Castellabate
Abstraktion at the Maier Gallery (A)
2017
Activities at the Rudolf Stolz Museum (I)
Spazio delle Arti-Disegno (I)
2022
My favorite work, Gallery Alessandro Casciaro, Bolzano (I)
Recent collaborations include work on the collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cavalese (I).
Related Exhibitions
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