Limited Edition Print – Kate Groobey La lutte, 2014
Kate Groobey is a painter and performance artist working in the South of France and Yorkshire, England. Groobey begins each figure as a line drawing, made from life studies, drawn from magazines or sometimes from her own imagination. These drawings are developed as watercolor paintings, which Groobey cuts up, reassembles, and repaints. If their poses seem impossible, it’s because they are: these bodies have been reconfigured several times. This process is repeated until Groobey is satisfied with the image. For her print, Kate Grooney was inspired by the Tuscan surroundings, the image of the Italian farmer in front of wavering Cyprus trees has a depth that is quite unique to a print due to the many layers used to build up this expressive image.
Select exhibition history includes: OFR Gallery, Paris; Saatchi Gallery, London; Mare Street Biennale 2010, London; Pure Pleasure, Atopos with Ikon Gallery, Venice. Groobey was the first woman to win the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize in 2018.
Villa Lena Foundation Print Editions- The Traditional Art of Printmaking with contemporary artists
Each year the Villa Lena Foundation works in collaboration with II Bisonte and a selection of contemporary artists on the Villa Lena residency programme in order to develop and produce a series of limited edition prints. Artists work with expert technicians to explore new techniques and push their practice into exciting and uncharted territory. A number of these unique prints are now available to purchase online.
ALL PROCEEDS FROM PRINT SALES WILL GO TOWARDS SUPPORTING THE VILLA LENA FOUNDATION.
Il Bisonte is a print-workshop for graphic arts founded in Florence in 1959 by Maria Luigia Guaita. Many artists – both Italian and non – accepted the invitation to work at Il Bisonte. including members of the Futurist movement -Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà, Alberto Magnelli, and such international stars as Pablo Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Helen Chadwick, Alexander Calder and Henry Moore. In 1983 Il Bisonte became a non-profit Cultural Centre and opened an international school, with the focus to preserve the teaching and printing of the traditional engraving techniques.