I am an Italian-Argentine visual artist. Currently I live in Italy and I develop my artistic activity in drawing, painting, engraving, sculpture, digital art, installations, performances, and experimental theater.
I started from a very young age, in Buenos Aires, I turned to the plastic arts and participated in collective and individual exhibitions.
Formation
While my journey through visual art continued to develop in a self-taught way, I entered the Faculty of Psychology at the National University of Buenos Aires.
Later, after graduation, I presented at the National University of Mar del Plata, Argentina, my thesis "Artistic expression of personality", a psychological study on creative processes in great artists.
From there I had two parallel paths opened, traced both by my passion for the art world and my deep interest into psychology. I started my professional activity as a psychotherapist and simultaneously I continued working in drawing and painting.
Then I decided to deepen my artistic formation at the High School of Visual Arts at Mar del Plata, and then at the National University Institute of the Arts in Buenos Aires. When I finished my studies, for several years I participated in several artistic training workshops, learning from great artists such as Libero Badii, Hugo Irureta, and Luis Ramoneda.
I also had training in theater: theatrical experimentation workshops with Gaston Pauls, clown techniques and improvisation, with the direction of Adrián Giampani, Mario Romeu, and others at Academia del Humor, Rosario and Mar del Plata, Argentina, and performance and scenography at Taller de Las Tablas in Madrid, Spain.
During the process of my artistic formation I was especially interested in the sculptural work of Constantin Brancusi, Tristan Tzara and Dadaism, the thought of Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, the theater of Eugene Ionesco, and this put me in contact with the University of Bucharest and the Romanian Cultural Foundation, obtaining scholarships.
Activity in teaching
As an Art Teacher I have been in charge of several classes: Art Didactics, Visual Education and Work Analysis, Psychology of Art, Fundamentals of Visual Advertising, Development of Creative Capacity, 20th Century Plastic Techniques, and others. Both at the institutional level and in workshops and private courses.
Participation at artistic residencies and Workshops
The following are some of the artistic meetings where I have participated with works.
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"Middle of the World" - Quito, Ecuador.
"Indigenous Ceramic" - Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
International Art Meeting - Ianza-Art Foundation, Neos Marmaras, Greece.
Artists Meeting - Inter-Art Foundation, Aiud, Romania.
Painting Meeting - Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
International Art Residency - Baia Mare, Romania.
"Coexistence of Original Cultures" - Iruya, Argentina.
Exhibition of Residences of the Ianza Foundation - Marktrodach, Germany.
"Voces de Hispanoamérica" - Madrid, Spain.
"Colores del Moro" - public spaces in Seville, Spain
Workshop "Africa in America" - Colonial Art Institute, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Meeting of American Muralists - Mar del Plata, Argentina.
International Art Residence - Foz do Iguazu, Brazil.
Individual and group exhibitions since 1990
Group exhibitions at galleries and museums from Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Germany, Romania, Hungary.
Individual
Buenos Aires Design, Argentina.
Krass Gallery, Rosario, Argentina.
Enlace Arte Contemporaneo Gallery, Lima, Peru.
Galleria Quatro Colonne, Sassari, Italy.
Publication in The Guardian, video-art "Mirror, Mirror", England.
RiQuadro Galleria d'Arte, Sorrento, Italy.
Complex of the Arts, RÃo de la Plata, Argentina.
End of the World Museum, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
Exhibition Center, Montevideo, Uruguay.
And others.
There are works of my authorship at
Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario,
Baia Mare National Art Museum,
Cluj Napoca National Art Museum,
Oradea National Art Museum,
Castagnino Art Museum, Mar del Plata,
National Museum of the Sea, Mar del Plata,
Inter-Art Aiud Foundation, Romania,
Ianza-Art International Foundation, Romania,
End of the World Museum, Ushuaia,
Museum Irureta of Contemporary Art, Argentina,
Sandor Martin Collection, Romania
East & West Artists Collection, Germany,
Ramoneda Museum, Humahuaca, Argentina,
Herrera Authier Collection,Argentina,
and in private collections of Argentina, Uruguay,
Germany, Austria, France, Italy, among others.
Links of interest
https://youtu.be/v96lH5c6fA4
https://www.facebook.com/783606635093523/videos/1065755113545339
https://www.facebook.com/783606635093523/videos/1065692550218262
http://www.cagliariartmagazine.it/intervista-a-monica-figus/
https://www.facebook.com/Atelier-Monica-Figus-783606635093523/
https://www.facebook.com/InterArtAiud/photos/a.204871209535932/601717329851316/?type=3&app=fbl
https://www.delphinemanet.com/video-artistique
https://afacerivj.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/amprente-din-argentina-la-galeria-de-arta-ianza-din-petrosani/
https://www.facebook.com/783606635093523/photos/a.1532523340201845/1532523373535175/?type=3&app=fbl
https://www.facebook.com/100004588475543/posts/1516559701840298/?app=fbl
About my work
I started my artistic career in figuration, leaning towards naturalism and surrealism, with a special taste for drawing and oil on canvas, in a self-taught way, within the framework of artistic movements of the '70s.
Some years later I was attracted by non-conventional techniques, non-figurative (or with a freer figuration) trends, enriched by mixed materials. I began to paint on new supports: wood, cardboard, metals, and using acrylics, paints and synthetic putties, including simple materials and objects from everyday life. This passage through abstraction and expressionism, across long periods, allowed me to include textures, sometimes monochrome, and others with colorist contrast and with the elaboration of several juxtaposed planes.
When I later returned to figuration, I did not loose contact with the diversity of materials, which is why I continue to work on varied supports and with mixed techniques. The various stages that have allowed me to see other aspects of artistic expression are not finished, because they have not been closed periods.
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In such a way that I am currently working on several series simultaneously, which develop over time. Thus, the painting resembles a communication expressed in different languages, each of them always in process and trying to go a little beyond.
Another language that is very close to me is that related to performance, open interventions in space, with installations or public presentations. In them, I sometimes include aspects of the theatre.
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The works presented here can be grouped according to the following thematic axes: "Itineraries", "Hypothesis", "Money", "Mountains under construction", "Maramures", "Nuragic", "Figuration; Mirror", "Other figurations". In general, in all my work, there is no documentary description of these themes, but rather what they have symbolically awakened in me and in my artistic search.
So far, various moments of my work.. To be continued...
