Daniela Gullotta

About the artist

The Italian painter Daniela Gullotta deals with architecture in her works, whereby she is particularly interested in abandoned buildings that have been left to decay. Their magic and silent visualisation of the past form the inspiration and content of her works. In 2014, for example, she explored vacant buildings in Germany in a series of pictures, including the former sanatoriums in Beelitz, an abandoned, partially dilapidated sanatorium near Berlin, and the ruins of the old chemical plant in Rüdersdorf (Märkisch-Oderland). However, the artist also focusses on architecture whose function is still preserved, as in her series on Cologne Cathedral. However, she exposes it to destruction in her pictures by depicting its interior with the floor torn open. On the one hand, the artist reflects on the ongoing construction and restoration work on the cathedral, and on the other, she poses the question of its possible future in view of people's dwindling commitment to God.

Gullotta focusses her artistic research primarily on the interiors of the architecture, which she initially captures in black and white photographs. Mounted on a painting surface, usually wood, she works on and expands them using various painting and drawing techniques in oil, acrylic, pencil and charcoal. Mixtures of sand and colour, fragments of canvas and gauze give the pictures a relief-like quality and emphasise that the photographic basis is secondary. In this way, the artist transforms real architecture into a fictitious one and allows the mysterious atmosphere of the abandoned buildings, steeped in the past and the generations of people who once animated them, to become tangible.

Gullotta prefers grey tones in her works. These can serve as a medium for reflecting reality, as grey has had a documentary character since the use of black and white photography, as well as a form of reflection in painting, through which the viewer always remains aware that it is a picture. Coloured accents in the form of squares, rectangles in surfaces or outlines underline the basic geometric tendency of her compositions.

Daniela Gullotta, born in 1974, lives and works in Bologna. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and at the Royal College of Art in London. She has been exhibiting her works internationally since 1996.