Diana González Gandolfi is a Philadelphia-based artist who creates mixed media abstract paintings and prints informed by maps, scientific imagery and autobiographical data. She was born in Argentina and spent her formative years in Colombia and Indonesia before settling with her family in New York City. Her early experiences as a foreigner in many countries and an immigrant are a constant influence on her work.
She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad including the Painting Center, NYC; the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; Morpeth Contemporary, Hopewell, NJ; Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona; Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ; the Allentown Museum, PA; the Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ; The Newark Museum, NJ; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the DeCordova and Lincoln Sculpture Park and Museum, MA; the Bronx Museum of Art, NYC; the International Print Center, NYC; the Boston Public Library, MA; Bess Cutler Gallery, NYC; and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ to name a few. Her most recent international exhibitions include Dialogue with Yinchuan: China-America International Printmaking Exhibition, Ningxia, China, and the 15th Tallinn Print Triennial – International Collaborative Mail Art Project: For Love Not Money at the Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia.
National and international collections that own her work include the Montclair, Zimmerli, Noyes, Hunterdon, Morris, and New Jersey State Museums in NJ, the Brevard Museum of Art in Florida, the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery and the University of Wollongong Art Collection in Australia, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Rutgers University, the Newark Public Library, and Princeton University Press among others. Throughout her career, her work has been in a number of publications and reviewed by the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Star Ledger, and Art New England.
González Gandolfi’s fellowships and honors include a Residency Grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, a Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper Fellowship, a Medal of Honor in Printmaking from the National Association of Women Artist, a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Painting Fellowship, three New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships for Printmaking and Painting, and two Traveling Fellowships from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She has been an Artist-in- Residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT and the Printmaking Center of New Jersey.
She holds a BFA from Tufts University, a Diploma and Fifth Year Graduate Certificates in Fine Arts from the Boston Museum School, and a Master of Education in Art Therapy from the Institute for the Arts and Human Development at Lesley University.
Statement
My life has been a series of richly layered experiences that naturally influenced my development as an artist. But my years as a young child with many homes - - and yet no permanent home - - most strongly shape my work. Moving with my family from Buenos Aires, where I was born, to Colombia, Indonesia, and New York, I absorbed diverse cultural environments without feeling deeply rooted in any one of them. This sense of shifting landscapes reveals itself both in the specific patterns and images that populate my work, and in the restless exploration that defines my artistic process.
Not surprisingly given my identity as a “Latinx-American,” my genre is neither pure painting nor printmaking but rather a hybrid of techniques. Since I began working with map imagery over a decade ago, my process has become more physically and conceptually layered often incorporating printed, drawn and painted images using ink, pigmented wax, oil paint and a variety of drawing materials. This build-up of marks, shapes and colors result in surfaces with a history and aged quality that suits the subject matter of the work.
My love of cartography dates back to my childhood travels, but map imagery did not emerge in my work until a recent period of reflection after the deaths of my parents and two siblings. What evolved depicts the spirit of each place -- its genius loci -- rather than a discernable terrain. The work navigates a journey that melds observation with memory and movement, creating a new space that exists somewhere between the real and the imagined.
Themes of loss -- of family, homes, countries -- infuse my art, but I also strive for connection. The constant flow of union and separation, the tension between rest and motion, arise almost unbidden during the artistic process. The work evolves, surfacing new ways of thinking about identity, consciousness, and time.