Monica Cattaneo, 1953 | Romantic Surrealist painter

Born in Florence, Monica Cattaneo - artist of Italian origin but naturalised Swiss citizen, seems to achieve in her painting a perfect fusion of the three pictorial styles, Marc Chagall’s Expressionism, René Magritte’s Surrealism and Antonio Donghi’s Magical Realism, giving life to a personal and original language in which nature and the human being’s relationship with it become the focal point.

Her protagonists, predominantly women, seem to emerge from a parallel world in which the atmosphere is rarefied, suspended between reality and dream, between images traceable to details that the eye recognises and an almost paradisiacal dimension in which all that surrounds the human being is the element of flora and fauna, which becomes the co-protagonist of the canvas itself.

The artist’s message is therefore that of the need for a return to the simplicity and spontaneity that springs from contact with that nature that is all too often neglected in the contemporary era, and thanks to which it is possible to recover a more innocent approach, more oriented towards appreciating all the beauty that revolves daily around the individual, who is often unaware of and distracted by something else.

Cattaneo’s painting style is centred on the balance between magic and objectivity, between blurred and evanescent backgrounds and figures of imaginary characters in which flowers, plants and animals are such an essential part of their lives that they appear in their clothes, hats, robes, in fact enveloping them and enhancing their open and dreamy approach; in some paintings she comes close to a Pointillisme in which the small dots of the original style are enlarged as if they were round mosaic pieces through which the artist composes the suits and headgear of the protagonists.

Nata a Firenze, Monica Cattaneo ha studiato alla Facoltà di Architettura, Ingegneria Edile-Architettura ed Urbanistica, presso Università degli Studi di Firenze.

Monica ha sempre avuto una grande passione per il disegno.

Dopo il matrimonio, stabilitasi a Ginevra, iniziò a dipingere, fuori dalla scuola.

Con passione, l'artista ha studiato ed applicato tecniche antiche, perfezionando anche il disegno.

Ha partecipato a numerose mostre personali e collettive.

Da diversi anni Monica vive in Francia ed espone regolarmente in fiere ed eventi d'arte.

Ha anche creato fumetti, poster e libri illustrati.

È fotografa e pratica la pittura su porcellana.