Social call Painting

Berkeley Rodmell (Rome, 1976) attended the graduate course in Medicine at La Sapienza University in Rome from 1997 to 1999, and began his artistic training in Fine Arts with Samuel Montealegre. In 2000 Berkeley received his bachelor’s degree in Acting from Silvio d’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome. He took part in workshops of contemporary dance and Butoh dance with Masaki Iwana and Ko Murobushi, developing further his interests in the Japanese culture. Rodmell performed as an actor in national and international productions such as by the Living Theatre and the Pina Bausch Tanztheater Company. In 2002 Rodmell moved to London where he has been living for three years.That experience gave him the opportunity to study the English language further and therefore making Berkeley perform in several productions on stage, cinema and tv. Besides, following a serious critical study of Shakespeare’s plays, Berkeley linked the word to the pictorial gesture. This took him to extend his investigation to Visual arts, to which Rodmell dedicated himself entirely. The regular visits to Tate Britain nourished his research, enriched by seeing the works by Turner whom Berkeley had admired on art books several years earlier. Rodmell went back to Rome in 2005 and started working as a journalist, writing about art on newspapers and web. The year after Berkeley settled down on Lake Como, carrying on his artistic training and attending courses of Drawing, Painting and Etching in Como and in Milan at the NABA. From 2009 to 2012 Rodmell worked in the Park and Museum of Flight – Volandia designing the permanent display and the temporary exhibitions of its collection, housed in the historical Caproni factory, beside the Milan-Malpensa Airport. In 2017 the municipality of Como organized and promoted a solo exhibition featuring a selection of his self-portraits at the Spazio Natta in the same city.