Miriam Pertegato is a visual artist born in Vicenza, Italy, in 1978.
In 1997 she took her diploma at the High School of Art, thus she enrolled in the Painting Course at the Fine Arts Academy of Venice, where she graduated in 2003. In 2000 she won an Erasmo Socrates scholarship to join the ARTEC project (Art Reaches out to Technology in Europe through Communication), an international workshop in Sant'Erasmo island, Venice, in collaboration with the Academies of Fine Arts of Austria, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Italy and Latvia. In 2001 she was selected for the 84th Collettiva Bevilacqua La Masa; in the same year she won the “Academic Prize –Arte Mondadori Prize“ sponsored by the Italian art magazine “Arte“. In 2002 she won the “Tiepolo Prize“ for at the Biennale of Etching in Mirano, Venice.
In 2003 she won a Masterclass in Contemporary Sacred Art promoted by the Stauròs Foundation, where she joined the painting workshop of Omar Galliani. From 2007 she is a lecturer at the Fine Arts Academy of Venice, teaching the Painting Course and Drawing with Professor Carlo Di Raco. In 2007 she was commissioned the painting “The Marriage at Cana“ for the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Caccamo, Palermo.
From October to December 2010 she is artist -in-residence at KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre in Ii, Finland.
In 2011 she exhibits her drawings into the Italian Academies Pavillon for the 54ma Biennale di Venezia.
“Looking at the images of people and especially women- offered by media nowadays, I realised that they are conceived as merely decorative objects. In Italy in the last few years this idea is getting stronger and stronger. When I look at someone my intent is in trying to recognise her authentic expressivity, the real human identity hidden behind the appearance, beyond the surface of beauty.
I portrait only people that are close to me and that I like, and I use the painting technique because I want to live and discuss every centimetre of my work, having not only a conceptual approach but also a physical one with it. Often I have the need to use naked bodies to get the most pure image. People who see my paintings have to perceive the feeling of being in front of an intimate image isolated from every geographical or historical context. For this reason such intimate and isolated image is monumental. I often paint self-portraits to observe myself deeply. In my complete self-portrait I offer my naked body to external judgments as a manifesto of my painting.
I am also the main subject of my drawing, but my drawing conception differs from my painting one. In my painting I look at me closely, but in my drawing I catch images from my mind and I develop them following the sign on paper in a way that is even faster than my thoughts, as I could see myself from above acting in a place where there is no weight and no logical rules.”
Miriam Pertegato
This website is mostly in Italian, but you can easily make use of it navigating across its various sections:
Bio (biography, with a list of most important events and prizes)
Statement
Mostre (exhibitions)
Dipinti (paintings)
Grafica (works on paper)
Sacro (sacred)
Installazioni (complex works)
Archivio (works archive)
Enjoy the viewing the site!