From the workshop to experimentation: Stefania Dei Rossi’s destiny
We met the young artist, who was started working in the home restoration workshop and has been able to create a truly original form of artistic expression. An intense dialogue ensued. – by Lorenzo Bassi
Creating unique works. Artworks that demonstrate the talent of who makes them and that are also the expression of the desire to establish herself as an artist. This is the aspiration of Stefania Dei Rossi, a young artist from two cities. Trieste, where she was born and raised, and Venice, where she currently lives and works. An artist who is not afraid to tell about herself.“In today’s world, much is called art. However, what is art for you?”
For me, art is everything that has to do with truth and intuition.
You can perceive if, behind a painting, or any other form of expression, there is a genuine intent, a sincere intuition.
This, of course, not only applies to the artworks belonging to the most classic sense of the term but also, for example, to the decoration of a piece of furniture or a terracotta vase.
If there is research behind it, if the creator is moved by a true and pure feeling, then any creative gesture can become art.
“The workshop, however neglected by the Academies, can forge future artists. What do those who have found their “school” in this business think about it?”
I believe that the Academies have lost strength as they have begun to want to look more and more like other universities.
The academy is not and shouldn’t be a university.
It should be the workshop’s transposition to the nth degree, with the best masters and complete preparation on several fronts.
By transforming it into a real university, students are naturally inclined to worry more about credits than about workshop life (a thing that also occurred to me while I was studying) which, more often than not, is made impossible by inadequate structures and by overcrowding of the spaces, often consequent to admission exams which, in fact, do not make any kind of selection.
Those who manage to continue their artistic career are very few, and often, as in my case, they are those who have parents working in the field that can support them.
I am fortunate to have grown up in an artisan workshop (my mother is a restorer).
I am not saying that my studies did not give me stimuli, on the contrary, but the life of the workshop, the real one, was crucial for my personal and working growth.
In fact, many of the techniques I use in my works have been “stolen” and learned in the restoration workshop, such as the gilding and the vertical hatchings that I use in the backgrounds of my drawings.
I believe that the way of organizing work, the familiarity that comes with the tools and materials, can be learned only with the workshop’s routine.
Unfortunately, not all students of the academies can experience this.
“But then, is an artistic creation, and the work that comes out of it, something concrete or it’s just an abstraction, destined to produce ephemeral results?”
The most concrete and immediately tangible aspect of art is obviously the material from which the artwork is made, without which there would be no possibility of fruition.
Even though, at the same time, this concrete matter is also ephemeral because it is destined to disappear like everything else.
But only the material of the work can be considered ephemeral, not the artwork itself.
I think that, even if an artwork will vanish, deteriorate with the passage of time, and even if no documentation to testify its existence will remain, it will still have had weight, an impact on those who have looked at it and have been moved by it, or even just on who made it.
It echoes through us in various forms.
One day we see a picture that moves us, excites us, upsets us for something that we are not well able to explain, and we do not know how this feeling, this energy will affect and reflect on our lives.
It might transform itself into a change, perhaps in personal growth, or it will leave us the simple memory of a moment in which we have tasted the feeling of being truly alive and connected with ourselves.
I don’t feel like making a too general reasoning on art; I don’t feel capable of it.
In my opinion, I can only say that what really matters is the experience, the experience of each one of us, since everything starts from there.
If an artwork has moved even just one person, this has a weight, and it means that art has done its “duty”.
Therefore, I believe that art has a precise and specific order for each one of us.
The images we see and the experiences we live are exactly where they should be, at the right time.
“Investing your life in art is certainly a significant choice; how important is it for Stefania Dei Rossi?”
Obviously, it is a significant choice, especially in a historical moment in which there are very few certainties for young people who approach the labor market.
I must admit that I made this choice in retrospect since it was not a conscious choice right away.
As a young girl, I would have thought of anything but attempting an artistic career; it was something that I didn’t even take into consideration as if it were “not serious” or completely unachievable (almost like saying: “when I grow up, I want to be an astronaut”).
The course of study I chose when I started my path at the Academy was restoration, and I mistakenly considered everything else as a side dish.
I never imagined that drawing would become my main activity, let alone try to make it my job… For me, it was pure science fiction!
But then, the moment you realize that that’s your “destiny”, however difficult it may be, you have to give yourself a chance.
When I say that it was a choice made in retrospect, I say it because it is relatively recently that I have decided to really give myself this possibility.
The definitive push was given to me by the understanding that I could have lived with a failure but certainly not with the regret of not even trying.
Once I understood this, everything that at first scared me to death suddenly became approachable and, at times, even funny.
I believe that, when you try to pursue an artistic career, you should do it only for a sincere push that you feel inside because, in this case, even if everything will go wrong and criticism and failures will rain, you will still feel okay with the one person to whom we all must truly be accountable: yourself.
I have always drawn first and foremost for myself.
That of the pedestal is an ancient and recurring image in my personal history. Since childhood, I remember pedestals of different shapes and sizes scattered around the house or in my mother’s various restoration workshops.“For what reason in your works you represent animals, like other subjects, on a pedestal?”
These objects furnished the room with an original and magnetic touch and have always exercised a certain charm on me. Even if apparently “useless”, I found them beautiful, elegant, majestic.
Therefore, I decided to propose them in my works (or rather, they have proposed themselves to me once again).
The pedestal is the tool I need to change the point of view.
It places the subjects portrayed in a new light. This allows us to re-examine them and consider them in a new and different way than usual.
The pedestal enhances and highlights, isolates the subject in a certain sense, or maybe even just the expression, the emotion of which the subject is the bearer.
If, on the one hand, the pedestal seems to immobilize and petrify the subjects, imprisoning them in an apparent stillness, in reality, it is immediately clear to the observer that they are more alive than ever.
The use of the pedestal, together with materials such as pencil and gold leaf, allows you to create a suspended atmosphere, out of time, sometimes dreamlike.
Looking at the drawing of the orangutan, at first glance, perhaps it will seem only a stuffed animal, but then we see its gaze and the composition formed by the pedestal and the golden background (therefore not its natural habitat); this decontextualization helps us to grasp its true essence making it seems like if we were seeing it for the first time.
It is even more evident in female portraits how the pedestal isolates an expression, a state of mind.
It serves to investigate the relationship between the object and the subject and study the conflict between identification with one’s body (imposed with more vehemence by today’s society) and the even more urgent need to listen to one’s inner self.
So it could be said that the pedestal is the real protagonist of my works; it is the common thread that binds them all together.
I really like this question because what I have clear in my mind comes from an inner instinct.“When you put the pencil on the paper, do you already have a clear idea in mind, or is it an inner instinct that leads the drawing to take shape?”
Mine is not a fast, gestural way of drawing, but it’s calm and slow, sometimes repetitive.
The technique’s meticulousness seems to almost counterbalance the instinct with which the image presents itself in my mind.
Therefore, everything arises, obviously, from the idea, that famous inspiration, intuition, or whatever you want to call it.
It is known that inspiration comes whenever she wants; she cannot be commanded.
We need to be patient because even the most prolonged frustration and melancholy is only the prelude to the creative act; it is the gestation without which there would be no birth.
So you have to try to welcome waiting as part of the game, as part of the actual work, because this is what it really is.
It often happens to me that the image appears “ready to use” in my mind; it’s very clear and vivid, like in a dream.
After all, are the images that come to visit us, aren’t they?
As often happens upon awakening, everything becomes a bit confused, even in front of the blank sheet.
During this attempt to represent as faithfully as possible what we had in mind, with all its atmosphere, the work really begins.
This is the most exciting part of the job; it is the challenge and the curiosity to see if I will be successful in my intent.
At times, I find that it’s also funny that maybe for months you do not know what to draw, but then, all of a sudden, you experience this urgency, this excitement mixed with a restlessness that subsides only by starting to work and does not leave you until the work isn’t finished.
What I try to do with my work is to create a more intimate and, if you like, less mundane relationship between the collector and my works.“Tell us why a collector should buy one of your artworks?”
Both at work but also when I choose a new piece of furniture for my home, I like to experiment and combine different styles, often mixing paintings, drawings, and frames to create “walls that decorate”, which have an impact but, at the same time, make the home welcoming.
Because this is the most important thing: how we live the artwork we choose, and it must not be something that sets a distance and inspires a sort of fear but, on the contrary, it must be something that you really enjoy. For example, while you are passing from a room to the other and your eye falls by chance on the artwork, or as when you find yourself observing it in almost meditative moments.
So my intent is to create handcrafted artworks with timeless taste, which can easily mix and match ancient paintings or create a strong sense of contrast in the most modern furnishings.
I try to give as much value and dignity as possible to the technique, to the manual skills, to the importance of the materials I use, hoping in some way to combine the dimension of the craftsman with the meaning of my drawings. I do this with the hope that my works will move someone else besides me.
