Angelo Bellobono (b.1964 Nettuno, Roma) is a visual artist based in Rome and New York. Through paintings, drawings, video and performance Bellobono investigates issues of belonging and identity, breaking through stereotypes and decontextualizing people, objects and concepts. His works explore the constant efforts humans make to seek out an identity and a place in which to belong. Having traveled extensively for many years around the world, Bellobono has seen how rapid social and geopolitical changes have effected people forced to live in cultures outside of their own. Much of his work investigates individual's efforts to maintain their identity or create a new one.
A sense of dramatic irony pervades many of his works, which give form to the chemistry of emotion, exploring how biochemistry translates into human behavior. This can be seen most strikingly in his portraits, which evoke the hidden portions of the human landscapes, evoking emotions through what is left unseen.
Having spent two decades as a ski instructor and coach, Bellobono has lived in various mountain ranges around the world. The elements of ice and mountains are frequent metaphorical elements in his work; ice representing the planet's archival memory, and mountains depicted as hinges and not barriers, connecting different cultures rather than dividing them. In 2011 he created the Atla(s)now project in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, to develop a community platform where art and skiing are used as a means of economic and social development. The project includes an art residency program that coexists with several other economic activities aimed at supporting and integrating with the local community.
His work has participated in various international exhibitions
in various museums, such as Calcutta, New Delhi, Brussels, Cairo
and in various Italian and foreign exhibitions.
He participated in the XV Quadrennial of Rome and in the 4th and
5th Marrakech Biennale and exhibited in public and private spaces
such as the Fondazione Volume and Wunderkammern in Rome, Envoy
Gallery in New York and Changing Role in Naples.
In 2002 he was among the finalists for the Lissone Prize; in 2005
he won the Celeste Prize for painting; in 2009 he won the prize in
the Drawing section of the american Artslant Award; in 2011 he is a
finalist for the Combat Prize; in 2012 he is among the finalists
for the award of Portali dello Scompiglio.
In 2015 he has been invited as speaker at the TEDxRome.
His works are held in various public and private collections, as
MAAM Museum Rome, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Benetton,
Hoguet, Floridi, Peretti.
Angelo Bellobono lives and work in Rome, New York and Marrakech.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
