Virginia Patrone

I was born in 1950, in Montevideo, from Italian and French grandparents. I live and work in Barcelona, having settled in Spain since 2003.Painted and drew since childhood with spontaneous commitment. I believe in the ancient, ritual power of drawing and painting, which is maybe as old as our conscience. It is a difficult, complex activity, which can also be very easy going at the precise moment. Always mysterious, unreachable, exhilarating, exhausting, painting is human. My painting is a flat land, a map of intentions, a process in which form and meaning constantly interact. Each and every time I start with human figures, mostly women, in their variety and complexity; searching for the mirror, carrying the wish to understand, the wish to explain. I build scenarios in which those women act: cities, fields, skies. I don't know who they are, but I think I know where they come from: reality, time, art. The substance I work with is colour. Colour, which by perceiving, we make exist. A ghostly game.Thinking that maybe it was too late for painters after the exhaustion of the avantgarde, decided to study architecture. From 1968 to 1979 I devoted myself to motherhood, raising four children, and to architecture's studies and work amidst very...

Architecture at the UDELAR University, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Certificate of proficiency in English, Anglo Uruguayan Institute, Montevideo. Painting at Pepe Montes studio, Torres García school. Printing with David Finkbeiner from the Pratt Institute, New York.

RECENT EXHIBITIONS

Retrospective solo exhibition, Figari Museum, Montevideo. From July 24th to October 4th 2020.
El Objeto del Tango, Blanes Museum, Montevideo. From March 14th to May 12th 2019.
El Objeto del Tango, Zielinsky Gallery, Barcelona. From April 11th to June 21st 2018.
Iris, the healing of a ghost, MNAV National Museum of Visual Arts, Montevideo. From September 17th to November 15th 2015.