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A LIFE DEDICATED TO ART.
MUSEUM OF BOZZETTI, PIETRASANTA
,
Biography
Biography
Elena Mutinelli - Sculptor (born in Milan in 1967). As a teenager, she frequented the studio of Gino Cosentino, a sculptor of Sicilian origin and pupil of Arturo Martini, who instilled in her a love of marble and form. In 1990, she graduated in Sculpture from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where her teachers included Alik Cavaliere, Andrea Cascella and Lidia Silvestri.
The granddaughter of sculptor Silvio Monfrini, creator of the monument to Francesco Baracca in Milan and pupil of Ernesto Bazzaro, she deepened her study of sculpture starting from tradition, gradually confirming the development of her expressive research with an innovative and mature approach in the contemporary scene, as expressed in her recent installations.
In the wake of the figurative tradition, Mutinelli's work expresses a vigorous and dramatic plasticity: the human body, and in particular the hands with their gestures, are the protagonists of her research, which makes use of a technical elaboration of great expressive power. In 1990, she moved to Pietrasanta to learn the technique of marble working. Subsequently, between 1992 and 1998, she worked between Milan and Pietrasanta.
In 1992, Elena Mutinelli was selected the Venerable factory of the Milan Cathedral to serve as sculptor for the Cathedral Works. This commission, which continued until 2005, involved the faithful reproduction of the Cathedral's sculptures and ornamentation in Candoglia marble. Carved by Mutinelli in her own studio, without the intervention of artisans or 3D lasers, she replaced the original spires, bows, and arches, all damaged by time. That same year, she also began collaborating with the historic Compagnia del Disegno art gallery in Milan, founded by Giovanni Testori, which opened her artistic path by including her in a roster of high-profile artists, including Igor Mitoraji, Giuliano Vangi, Varlin and Giò Pomodoro, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Zoran Music, Andrea Martinelli, Giovanni Frangi, and Velasco Vitali. Mutinelli's works were chosen to represent the exhibition "Forty Years of Sculpture," curated by Alain Toubas.
In 1998, she moved permanently to Milan, a city that offered her the opportunity to collaborate with other prestigious historic and avant-garde art galleries. That same year, Giorgio Segato brought together a decade's worth of sculptures and drawings, curating a major public solo exhibition, "Le mani sul corpo" (Hands on the Body), in honor of the Wagnerian Dawn Concerts season, under the patronage of the University of Salerno at the Cloister of Villa Rufolo, Municipality of Ravello, Salerno.
During these years, Mutinelli began her professional career in Milan's most important institutional exhibition spaces, where she appeared alongside the great sculptors of the 20th century. This marked the beginning of her career as a sculptor. She was the youngest artist included in the historic exhibition "Disegni per scultura" held at the Museo della Permanente. It was there that she met the historian and art critic Raffaele De Grada and other leading figures in the historical and contemporary avant-garde art movements who would later follow her work.
In the years that followed, she developed her own expressive power, which defined her orientation: the body is a space that still offers her much to express; it is alive, pulsating, and transcends the conflicting dialectic between tradition and modernity. Hers is an almost virile, plastic physiognomy in both her sculptures and her large-scale drawings.
From 2003 to 2005, the Venerable factory of the Milan Cathedral appointed her to manage the stonemasons' worksite at the Opera Prison (MI), teaching them how to faithfully reproduce the sculptures and ornaments of Milan Cathedral from the original models.
In 2012, she moved her studio outside Milan. These were years of intense work, during which she devoted herself entirely to sculpture, exhibiting in solo and public exhibitions.
In 2014, she won the international competition "DonnaScultura | XII edition," curated by Valentina Fogher and Chiara Celli. Along with Carla Marchelli, Majd Patou Fathallah, and Inger Sannes, she was one of four international sculptors to have a solo exhibition in the Cloister of Sant'Agostino in Pietrasanta.
In 2015, the Pietrasanta Department of Culture and the Tuscany Region invited her as a professional sculptor for a project in collaboration with the Alabama Cultural Council (USA). Mutinelli also brought her experience as a sculptor to the United States, teaching American professional sculptors how to carve the marble from the Sylacauga quarry used for the White House.
In honor of the Sylacauga Marble Festival, he sculpted a complex sculpture directly on marble without a model, titled "Hic et Nunc," on site. It is currently permanently exhibited in the public collection of the Library's Sculpture Museum, Sylacauga, Alabama, USA.
That same year, at the invitation of Auburn University in Alabama, he gave a lecture on "The Workshop in the Italian Renaissance," connecting this topic to the development of his sculpture, which, from the very beginning, was born through his active participation in workshops, both as a teenager in Milan and later among the masters of art studios in Tuscany, where he encountered incomparable stonemasons and international artists.
In 2016, the city of Monza dedicated a retrospective exhibition to her at the Civic Museums of Monza, curated by Dario Porta. The exhibition, titled "Nel silenzio più teso," brought together her most significant works with the aim of establishing a dialogue between the stone monuments in the museum's collection and her sculptures, drawings, and sculpted panels, highlighting the symbolic values of contemporary plastic representation through affinity and contrast.
The second decade of the 2000s concluded with a solo exhibition curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, titled "Noi, nemmeno dannati," featuring some seventy works on display in the heart of Florence at Etra Studio Tommasi, the studio where Benvenuto Cellini cast the Perseus.
In 2021, she was invited to work on a monumental marble work in honor of the 500th anniversary of Rosso Fiorentino's "Deposizione." At the request of the exhibition's scientific committee, Elena Mutinelli created "Manifesto Principio," a work inspired by the great Mannerist's altarpiece, inspired by the theatricality of the master's Deposition. Mutinelli translates the original gestures of the Rosso altarpiece into a visual vision of cyclicality in which the end is the beginning, where tradition and contemporary art see no boundaries.
The work "Manifesto principio" was exhibited at the Pinacoteca Civica in Volterra, home of Rosso Fiorentino's Deposizione, in honor of the exhibition "Rubeus et Alii," curated by Elisa Gradì and Antonio Natali. It was then acquired and permanently installed in the town of Chiaramonte Gulfi in Sicily, with an inaugural opening curated by Andrea Guastella.
In 2022, at the invitation of Professor Vittorio Sgarbi, she exhibited a marble work inspired by Canova in the exhibition "Canova tra innocenza e peccato," curated by Beatrice Avanzi and Denis Isaia at the Mart Museum in Rovereto.
Elena Mutinelli delves into the material, grasping its vitality in the anatomical tension of bodies, with the strength of someone who knows the material, especially marble, worked without the mediation of laser machines and almost always without a model.
["His sculpture is the embodiment of the human presence confronting its own predatory nature, as is life. His works are an expression of the adventuring of human potential; strong sculptures, contracted anatomies grappling with the daily intentions of existence"] – (cit. Giorgio Segato, in "Hands on the Body").
["The muscles are always visible beneath the network of veins that seem to give them blood and with it fire"] – (cit. Alfonso Pluchinotta, in "Encounter and Embrace in Twentieth-Century Sculpture from Rodin to Mitoraj").
Elena Mutinelli's works have been exhibited in solo and group shows at prestigious institutional museums such as the Museo Fondazione Giudici in Lugano, the GAM Galleria di Arte Moderna in Catania, the MART in Rovereto, the Museo Pinacoteca in Volterra, Palazzo Monte di Pietà in Padua, the Piano Nobile of the Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua, the Palazzo Reale in Milan, the Civic Museums of Monza, the Sculpture Museum of the Sylacauga Library in Alabama, USA, and the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan.
Elena Mutinelli's recent exhibitions have placed her among the most significant international art scenes, in direct dialogue with the great names of modern and contemporary art.
His works have been exhibited alongside figures of internationally renowned historicized artists, alongside leading masters of the historical and contemporary avant-garde as in “ Incontro e abbraccio nella scultura del Novecento da Rodin a Mitoraj ” curated by Maria Beatrice Aituzi and Alfonso Pluchinotta, with: Auguste Rodin, Salvador Dalì, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Luciano Minguzzi, Ernesto Bazzaro, Francesco Messina, Arturo Martini, Igor Mitoraj, Sorel Etrog, Pietro Canonica, Elena Mutinelli, Novello Finotti, Kate Kollwitz, Cleas Oldenburg, Rainer Kriester, Hans Kastler, Jorge Borrás llop; and in "Essenzialmente la mano", curated by Franco Bassetto, Alfonso Pluchinotta, and Annamaria Sandonà, featuring: César, Joan Miró, Breton, Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Daniel Spoerri, Mimmo Paladino, Novello Finotti, Elena Mutinelli, Lorenzo Queen, and Patrizia Guerresi; and in "Canova tra innocenza e peccato", curated by Beatrice Avanzi and Denis Isaia, featuring photographers and sculptors Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Antonio Canova, Igor Mitoraj, Miroslav Tichý, Jan Saudek, Joel-Peter Witkin, Dino Pedriali, Alinari, Luigi Spina, and Mustafa Sabbagh.
Elena Mutinelli's works enjoy widespread recognition among the public, galleries, museums, and institutional spaces. These institutions have dedicated both solo and group exhibitions to the artist, highlighting the value of her sculptural journey and the recognition she has received in the contemporary art world. Elena Mutinelli's sculptures are held in important international private and public collections, including a selection of the most significant:
Chiaramonte Gulfi, RG, "Manifesto Principio," a public work, a monumental marble sculpture located in the city.
Work created at the request of the exhibition's scientific committee and exhibited in 2021 in honor of the 500th anniversary of Rosso Fiorentino's Deposition at the Pinacoteca Civica di Volterra, curated by Antonio Natali and Elisa Gradi.
Gimoka Caffe' Group Collection, commissioned.
Library Sculpture Museum, Sylacauga, Alabama, USA, statuary marble sculpture "Hic et Nunc," Museum collection.
Museo dei Bozzetti, museum collection, Pietrasanta.
Collection a Tia, Denver, USA.
Dragan ButanGas Collection Group collection, commissioned a sculptural work from Elena Mutinelli: the founder's hand with the shield depicting the ButanGas Dragon.
Municipality of Reana del Royale (Udine), monumental public work in marble, Fior di Roccia del Timao. Empty Monument with Joined Hands
University of Art History of Siena, with the work Nell'arena, from the University's collection, specializing in Historical and Artistic Heritage.
Jolly Hotel Madison Towers Collection, New York, USA, more than one hundred graphic works.
Owens Corning Collection, works commissioned by Elena Mutinelli. The sculptures from the Corning collection were exhibited that same year alongside the precious paintings of "Antonio Guardi-Elena Mutinelli" and other important ancient works at the Lo Studiolo Museum in Milan.
Elena Mutinelli is currently a professor of Artistic Anatomy at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin and teaches the Preparatory Course at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.
She has taught Sculpture and Sculpture Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata and the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa.
She has also held conferences and seminars on the art of sculpture and marble working at various Italian andinternational universities, including AuburnUniversity (Alabama, USA).
© ELENA MUTINELLI | All rights reserved
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sculpture@elenamutinelli.eu
EM SCULPTURE GALLERY