VERONICA LENZA GIOIELLI

One piece for one person. Alone or in a flock, Linneo* items are essential forms adorned with individually hand painted miniature views, drawings and stories. Linneo jewels are frames for an ecosystem designed on minute plates or organic shapes in porcelain. Graphic and architectural figures, plants and animals interact with each other, the world and the people.

*Carl Linnaeus (1707 –1778), was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology.

Aristotle said “The aim of Art is to present not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance; for this, not the external manner and detail, constitutes true reality”.

Veronica Lenza research and drawings look real. Nevertheless there is always something, a slight twist, an irregular detail, a scaled part that makes you think they are visions rather than verifications.

Since 2010.

Leonardo DiCaprio Tigers

The collaboration between GVM and Veronica Lenza was born in Paris, during a dinner when Gualtiero Vanelli saw a series of imaginary animals drawn for Linneo, the gold and porcelain jewelry line that Veronica is designing since 2010. The discussion was somehow unintelligible for the other invitees, with glimpses about marble pianos, cave concerts, tigers, flower birds, auctions and Leonardo DiCaprio. Quickly, decisions were taken. Gualtiero wanted a tiger portrait, on the marble piano designed for the yearly fund-raising auction organized by Leonardo DiCaprio foundation and savetigersnow.org

Back in Milan Veronica begun her layering process and research. Tiger images where tested, drawn and redrawn for weeks, while porcelain plates and silver frames where produced in Iran to fit the marble piano shoulders. The two final tigers, detailed and defined with an infinite effort, are a strictly analogical product; continuity and smoothness overtakes pixels and approximation, in a process similar to meditation, where mantras allows you to meet god, while praying only surrogates this encounter.

A portrait is an art genre that can both memorialize or define power. A tiger portrait is astonishingly combining both conditions. Human portraits emanate many feelings, mysteriousness, richness, self confidence, simply beauty; the portrait of an endangered species speaks about death and disappearance, but is at the same time a message of hope and responsibility for humans. Power is not anymore only an attribute of the portrayed subject, but is in the eyes of our society that can and should act. For the “Leonardo DiCaprio Tigers” Veronica draws a warning and memento, where the portrait brings you so close to the tiger’s eyes that you can feel their fear, our fear, when we are told that tigers are disappearing.