Biography

SIMONA RAGAZZI was born in Bologna in 1969, the city in which he trained artistically. She obtained the Diploma in Painting at the State Institute of Art and subsequently the Diploma with honors in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts.

At the same time, she deepens her training in art laboratories, graphic studies and Erasmus at the Fine Art University UWE in Bristol. During her thesis in sculpture in 1993, she founded the Atelier Paese dei Balocchi, an Arts and Crafts laboratory where she has since created her own works, taught sculpture, ceramic, and painting techniques, and collaborated with Italian and international artists.

What is evident as soon as you immerse yourself in Simona's world is her passion for physiognomy, for the study of the face and human expressiveness, a primitive element, archetype and engine of her art. In her artistic evolution, her research has also gone much further, giving space to themes, techniques and means of expression that lead back to the poetics of the story and to representing the theme of the passage of time and giving meaning to it.
Hence her sense for narration on time spans that are often dissimilar to each other, but always with the intention of describing something that she has engraved on the human factor, thus capturing the artist's soul and inspiration.

She is an eclectic artist, she works mainly with sculpture to which she harmoniously combines graphic, pictorial, photographic and installation works.
By fusing the rational and cognitive aspect with the emotional and instinctual one, the artist as a goal elaborates a synthesis of her particular point of view on man, a refined, punctual and never redundant investigation.
Through the lattices of memory, the artist induces the observer to reflect on the values linked to time which becomes an essential element for what human beings have in common, linked by continuous change, by the flow of transformations, instantaneous or long-lasting.

Simona Ragazzi's works reveal a conceptual, emotional and communicative aspect, which intertwines the dimensions of time, shape and space with elegance and sensitivity in a unique way.

Among her major artistic participations, in 2018 she was invited to represent Italian sculpture at "INSIGHT - A NEW VISION FOR PUBLIC ART" in Shenzhen, China, and in 2011 she was selected for the 54th Venice Biennale, ITALIAN Pavilion, Emilia Romagna Section, Palazzo Pigorini, Parma.

He has held solo exhibitions in museums and public venues, including the Museum of Music in Bologna in 2017, the Modern Art Museum of Cà La Ghironda in Zola Predosa (BO) in 2016, and the Priory of San Lorenzo in Montelupo Fiorentino (FI) in 2005.

He has exhibited in numerous public and private venues, including the Palazzo Podestarile in Montelupo Fiorentino (FI) in 2022, the Castello Visconteo in Pagazzano, Brescia in 2018, the Parco dell'Isola delle Rose in Venice in 2015, and the Municipality of Roquebrune-sur-Argens, France in 2001 and 2002.

He has participated in national and international fairs both in Italy and abroad, including Artefiera in Bologna, Lineante in Ghent, Belgium, and Art Innsbruck in Austria.

Her works are present in public collections, such as the Manoir de Cologny in Geneva and the MAGI'900 Museum in Pieve di Cento (BO), and private collections worldwide.

She currently works permanently with several galleries in Italy.

Simona Ragazzi lives and works in Bologna.