Sandra Tomboloni

Born in 1961

Italy

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Tomboloni

profile by Serena Becagli

date of inserition in W.A.D. 06/2024

Biography

“First of all, I ask myself who am I? How did I get started? I started from a discomfort, I had the urge to put who I am into an artwork.
But being yourself inside an artwork is not enough and putting your own discomfort into the things you do is not enough, you also have to look around and talk about the important encounters. The important encounters are the ones that make you grow not the ones that make you a “career.” A bad word “career.” I am not a business executive, I talk about what I feel, I look at what others don’t care about.

In my discomfort I have seen that there are others like me around, so I speak out and make a fight for them as well. I don’t look at power or eternity but at fragility. I think fragility is really life, respect for those who are in the shadows in the corner alone, because they are equal to those who are powerful and in the light. I intend to put these struggles of mine into my work, with what I can do.
I could say which exhibitions were important like the first exhibition at the Gentili Gallery in Florence the relationship with Fabbrica Europa or the one in the United States at the Strauss collectors, but they are all less important than the encounters that made me grow and become militant.

The people who share with me the concepts of equality and fragility are important.Being united for something worthwhile makes you grow in language as well. More important to me are the issues and struggles I do, the research happens because you have something to say.”

She trained first at the Tornabuoni Professional Institute in Florence, with a diploma in fashion with costume designer Anna Anni, and then in painting at theAcademy of Fine Arts in Florence, with a thesis in cinema on Visconti. She has among her teachers the painter Silvio Loffredo and Adriano Sofri.
In Sandra Tomboloni work and biography often coincide and overlap: she soon fell ill with anorexia, a disease with which she lives. It will be a material like pongo that will characterize her artistic path, a material through which, after the first informal canvases – in which the figure was absent and almost annihilated – figuration gradually takes shape. Pongo is matter and color at the same time, conveying all the sense of fragility and precariousness characteristic of the artist’s work.
Shortly after graduating from the Academy, Sandra also spends a period living outside her home, on the streets, experiencing at first hand the sense of marginality and precariousness reflected in her work. Broken and abandoned objects, given new life, soon become the protagonists of her installations.

In addition to works in pongo, a material with which she covers objects, totems and panels, also creating large bas-reliefs, the artist has an extensive production of drawings, as well as a production of ceramic sculptures and experimentation with wax sculptures and bronze castings.

Colleagues and friends at the Academy, such as the artist Antonio Catelani, soon brought Sandra Tomboloni’s work to the attention of critics and gallery owners, and in the mid-1990s she began working with galleries such as Gentili and Frittelli in Florence, Baronian in Brussels, and Lo Studio la Città in Verona, and then in the early 2000s with Biagiotti Gallery in Florence.

In 2013 she began a collaboration with the Vannucci Gallery in Pistoia, which in 2020 presented a solo exhibition by the Florentine artist.
In 1995 he was among the protagonists of Aperto Italia ’95 curated by Francesco Bonami and Emanuela De Cecco at the Trevi Flash Art Museum.

Her works have been exhibited in public spaces such as the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, which has some works in its collection, at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, at the GAM in Bologna, at the Museo degli Innocenti in Florence, and at the Hudson Valley MOCA in Peekskill (New York), where she presented a solo exhibition following a residency.

Her works have remained in the collection of the Straus family founders of the Center on the outskirts of New York City. In 2018, a publication Sandra Tomboloni – The Italian Bad Girl, edited by Stefania Gori and published by Gli Ori, was released, tracing the artist’s history and work, from her beginnings, to her collaborations with Virgilio Sieni, Fabbrica Europa, to the artist’s collective projects with other professionals or social promotion associations

Curriculum

Principali mostre personali

• 2020 La fragilità degli ospiti, a cura di Serena Becagli, Galleria Vannucci, Pistoia;
• 2014 Orfani, Galleria Vannucci, Pistoia;
• 2013 Homeless#2013, Casa Rossa, Pontassieve (FI);
• 2011 Trasmigrazioni, Galleria Biagiotti, Firenze;
• 2010 Prezzemolina, a cura di Stefania Gori, La Smilea, Montale, (PT); Contrasted-Materia Instabile, Sandra Tomboloni/ Virgina Lopez, a cura di Matilde Puleo, Palazzo Comunale, Arezzo;
• 2005 Between and Underneath, Goldonetta, Firenze;
• 2004 Lost and Found, HVCCA, Peekskill, New York;
• 2000 Mostra-Laboratorio, Museo Pecci, Prato, 2000;
• 1999 Me, Io, Jeg, con Elizabeth Peyton e Lene Vearing, Salzau (Kiel), Festival di Teatro, Todi;
• 1999 Bu, Pinocchio, con Gianluigi Toccafondo, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena;
• 1997 Generazioni/1, con Luca Caccioni e Giovanni Manfredini, Palazzina dei Giardini, Modena;
• 1997 Storia di un pulcino o due, Galleria Studio La Città, Verona;
• 1995-1995 Mostra personale, Galleria Gentili, Firenze.

Principali mostre collettive

• 2024 Colorescenze. Artiste Toscana Futuro. A cura di Stefano Collicelli Cagol e Elena Magini, centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato

• 2021 Paesaggi Personali, a cura di Serena Becagli, Galleria ME Vannucci, Pistoia;
• 2020 Bambini per sempre! Infanzia e illustrazione nell’arte del primo Novecento, a cura di Arabella Natalini e Nadia Marchioni, Museo degli Innocenti, Firenze;
• 2019 «E p h e m e r a – Ε φ ή μ ε ρ α», a cura di Friederike Schmid, White Space Black Box, Neuchâtel, Svizzera;
• 2018 LET’S TWIST AGAIN, con Luca Caccioni, Fabrizio Corneli, Vittorio Corsini, Franco Guerzoni, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pino Spagnulo, Giovanni Termini, Sandra Tomboloni, Giuliano Tomaino, Galleria Vannucci, Pistoia.
• 2018 Stereo Love Seats, Marc Straus Gallery, New York;
• 2018 De Scultura, a cura di Cristiana Collu e Saretto Cincinelli, Casa Masaccio Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno (AR) (artisti in mostra: Emanuele Becheri, Paolo Fabiani, Michel Frere, Anton Raphael Mafai, Arturo Martini, Davide Rivalta, Medardo Rosso, Sandra Tomboloni);
• 2013 Borderline, Artisti tra normalità e follia. Da Bosch a Dalì, dall’Art Brut a Basquiat, MAR, Ravenna;
• 2008 Italian Genius, Now, mostra itinerante del Museo Pecci di Prato nei musei d’arte contemporanea in Asia, 2008-2007;
• 2007 Revenge, HVCCA, Peekskill, New York;
• 2006 Tattile-Duttile, Galleria VM21, Roma
• 2005 Minyonies, a cura di Maria Luisa Frisa e Giuliana Altea, Alghero,;
• 2004 A.I. 20 artiste italiane nel XX secolo, a cura di Elena Lazzarini e Pier Paolo Pancotto, Palazzo Mediceo Seravezza, (Lu);
• 2004 Collezione Permanente, a cura di Samuel Fuyumi Namioka, Museo Pecci, Prato, 2004;
• 2003 Not in New York- Emerging European Artists, a cura di Marc Straus, Stux Gallery, New York;
• 2003 Imagerie Art Fashion, a cura di Maria Campitelli, Musei del Canal Grande, Trieste;
• 2003 Giovani Artisti Italiani, Premio Maretti, a cura di Roberto Daolio, Silvia Grandi, Maura Pozzati, GAM, Bologna;
• 2003 Rotte Metropolitane, a cura di Daria Filardo, Orto Botanico, Firenze;
• 2002 Continuità. Arte in toscana 1990-2000, a cura di Jean-Christophe Amman, Museo Pecci, Prato;
• 1997 Onomatopea, a cura di Antony Iannacci, Galleria Studio La Città, Verona;
• 1997 Collaborazione con la compagnia Virgilio Sieni Danza allo spettacolo Quartetto sul vento, variazioni sull’identico, Teatro Metastasio, Prato;
• 1997 Realizzazione dell’opera in progress Il Piccolo Principe, a cura di Sergio Risaliti, all’interno del festival Fabbrica Europa, ex Stazione Leopolda Firenze.
• 1996 Realtà giovane XXX- VI Premio Suzzara, Galleria civica d’arte contemporanea. (Vinse il premio acquisto ex aequo con Caira, Botto&Bruno e Casolaro);
• 1996 LEONKART, a cura di Arcangelo, Centro Sociale Leoncavallo, Milano;
• 1995 Aperto Italia 1995, a cura di Francesco Bonami e Emanuela De Cecco, Trevi Flash art Museum, Trevi (Pg);
• 1994 Turbare il tempo, a cura di Saretto Cincinelli, Museo Archeologico di Firenze.