biographical note

Marilena Galella was born in Melfi, Basilicata (Italy).
An architect and painter, she lives and works in Naples.
From a very young age she began to show a keen interest in art, drawing and painting.
In 1979 she began to exhibit her paintings, winning prizes and awards. Following a long hiatus from public exhibitions, during which time she continued her pictorial research as well as her professional activity as architect, she resumed her participation in public events, receiving the Critics’ Award for the photographic section at an international competition in 2004.
In 2009, one of her paintings was selected for the painting competition “International Award City of NewYork” and was sub sequently included in the Collective Exhibition of Turin, Italy.
In 2010 she was invited to exhibit her work in the collective exhibition “International Award Tokyo”, in Brussels.
In 2011, the University of Naples “L’Orientale” sponsored two solo artist exhibitions, one in Naples, at Palazzo Du Mesnil and the other in Procida (NA) at the High School for Higher Education.
Most of her works are kept in private collections.

Critical Review

Sign and Matter

…For the artist, the work, the painting, is the field in which thought and its physical realisation play with equalskill. A realisation achieved through the adroit use of colour, canvas, design, fluidity or depth of matter. A composition made of distances and intentional crowding. In this particular work – one that is both serene and tense, harsh and warm, controlled yet free -it is energy that holds centre stage, an energy that the static existence of the painting does not diminish but on the contrary exalts and makes more comprehensible. An energy that is a confrontation of forces, of interaction between colours, lines, measures and directions. An energy visibly distinctive from dynamism, generated from that point that so often draws our attention in her canvasses, always small and discreet, dark and potent.

Marco de Gemmis

The point always has the same function. It is always the origin.
The opening part of a movement that generates subtle and veiled lines, surfaces of colour or thick matter. But it is not always recognizable: often it emerges, in her more recent paintings, as a “zone” of initial force. Point, line, extension or mass, painting of sign or painting of matter, the firm desire to set in motion the internal tensions of the sign is always manifest. Lines of force and guidance that determine conflicting relations between elements existing in an apparently mutual negation: a spatiality that is closed and episodic, and thus open; points and masses; layers of colour lean in texture and depth of matter; lines bothtaut and supple; elements that are fragile yet weighty; vast are as that are bare, where nothing happens, off setting others with a concentration of activities and movement.
A composition of forces that placates all tension.
Thus equilibrium and tension or, in other words, energy.

Marilena Galella