The Geography of Abundance
I was born in Gorizia in late 1957, in a city divided by a political border and a concrete wall that cut through homes, gardens and streets. My early childhood unfolded in an environment marked by illness, instability and constant movement. At three and a half, my maternal aunt took me from my grandmother’s home in Udine to São Paulo, Brazil. This shift gave me two families, two continents and two languages before I understood what language meant. Growing up between Italy and Brazil did not make transformation easy. The shift from early fractures to a sense of abundance took years of inner work, reflection and rebuilding. Over time, movement stopped being a disruption and became a source of renewal. Borders slowly turned into horizons. Today I live between Vienna and Barcelona, continuing a life shaped by transitions, cultural crossings and reinvention, not as effortless passages, but as conscious acts of transformation. This lived geography of movement is the foundation of my artistic practice.
From science to canvas
As a child, retreating into the mind became a way to navigate uncertainty. That analytical instinct led me to study computer science and build a scientific career, first at CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research), then for 27 years at the ILO (International Labour Organization) in Geneva.
At CERN, surrounded by physicists exploring the invisible forces that hold matter together, I learned that reality has multiple truths. A particle does not have a fixed state until it is observed. This quantum principle became the philosophical core of my work.
At the ILO, collaborating with colleagues from 187 countries, I saw how perspective shapes meaning. The same reality can be interpreted in countless ways, each one partial and valid. Over time, I could transform the fractures of my early life - abandonment, separation, dislocation - into sources of strength and openness.
When I moved to Vienna, what had been a life-long passion became a vocation. Encouraged by artists and gallerists, I developed a personal visual language and began exhibiting across Europe and beyond. I did not become an artist despite my scientific career; I became this particular artist because of it.
The rigour of CERN taught me to look beneath surfaces. The decades at the ILO taught me that beauty lives in the space between perspectives.
An alchemical dialogue
My practice is a form of material alchemy. I work with mixed media on canvas, resin on panel and Bohemian crystal. Earth powders, bitumen, metal dusts, acrylics, resins and found objects form layered compositions that merge ancestral materials with contemporary fluidity in a reflection of my own sedimented history of cultures, languages and reinventions.
Embracing unpredictability has become central to my process: trusting what emerges, accepting uncertainty and discovering beauty beyond intention.
This approach grew from my personal transformation. Over time, I began collecting abandoned objects and giving them new voice thus rewriting their story as I rewrote mine. This is how "Stories" began in Prague in 2023, inspired by the home-town of my great‑great‑grandmother Giulia. Old Bohemian crystal trays and small forgotten figurines became stages for creatures unable to resist changes imposed on their habitat, echoing the shifts I experienced as a child.
My influences include Zao Wou‑Ki, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Pierre Soulages. The Japanese concept of "ma" , space as breath, as the living pause between things, resonates deeply with how I understand the horizon line in my work.
Across six decades, several countries and two careers, one conviction guides me: movement transforms.
The Vision
Today I live and work between Vienna and Barcelona, continuing a life shaped by movement, crossings and reinvention. My practice spans painting, mixed‑media works, three‑dimensional installations and large‑scale commissions for private and institutional spaces. What began in a divided city has unfolded into a life without walls; one enriched by cultures, friendships and possibilities I could not have imagined from Gorizia where it started.
The fractures became crossings. The crossings became horizons. And the horizons became the paintings.
Each series I create explores a different dimension of the same discovery: that movement transforms. That what we are given: however difficult, however unexpected, contains the seed of something more. Beauty does not emerge despite the complexity of a life; it emerges because of it.
In a world that increasingly prefers walls to bridges, my work offers a different kind of space: one where limits become points of departure, where materials that should not belong together find harmony, and where a horizon is always an invitation.
“Each creation begins as a small act of listening: to the material, to memory, to the quiet places where experience settles. As the work unfolds, something familiar rises to the surface: a feeling, a breath, a recognition. By welcoming the unpredictability of matter and the long journey that shaped me, each piece becomes a gentle offering of presence, resilience and light. They are traces of transformation, like reminders that beauty often appears where life has been most complex.”
— Antonella Quacchia