Verdiana Patacchini

Provenance: Courtesy of the Artist

Verdiana Patacchini, known as Virdi, is an Italian visual artist, born in Orvieto in 1984. After studying in Italy and Spain, she graduated with top marks in painting, completing a dissertation on Carlo Guarienti who would later become her teacher. Over the last few years, she’s been living between Italy and America where she has displayed her works of art on various occasions. She currently lives and works in Rome, with painting being her main occupation.“My work transforms my perceptions into paintings. Images from my imagination play the leading role, and they take their inspiration from real life: to become a piece of art, figures not only have to resemble real life, but they must also work as a painting. I believe that painting takes priority over the nature of things. I know this is difficult. The great painters followed the same path, more or less, and so there’s an absolute freedom where rules wouldn’t work too well, and it’s in this freedom that we risk losing ourselves. In any case, I am horrified by paintings that tell stories. For me, painting should be about evoking images which become absolute with regard to the world of the artist. My work is research into the quality of symbols, the quality of colour and material, and I am always willing to start from scratch and call everything into question”