Bettina Werner

Bettina Werner, born in Milan, Italy in 1965, is an Italian artist based in New York City. She has created artwork with her colorized salt technique since the early 1980s. Werner became an American citizen in July 2010 and now bears a dual citizenship in the U.S. and her native Italy.

Life and work

She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. She has been living and working in New York City for many years.

Salt's crystallized texture, clouded transparency, and historical value intrigued Werner and encouraged her to explore different combinations of textures and colors in the hope of creating a unique and signature artistic language. Her success with salt led Werner to the U.S. in 1989, where she began showing her work at the Marisa Del Re Gallery one year later.[1]

Her salt paintings, sculptures, art installations and functional pieces of artwork, such as her salt sculpture-table, salt sculpture-bed and salt sculpture-backgammon boards have been exhibited in museums and galleries extensively throughout Europe, Russia and the United States, including the Whitney Museum, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Detroit Institute of Art, Las Vegas Art Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank, the collection of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, and the collection of Martin Margulies in Miami.[1]

In 2002, she founded The Salt Queen Foundation in New York, a non-profit educational institution. Its goals include the celebration of artists who use innovative techniques and unusual materials.[1] The institution is dedicated to the support, conservation, and protection of works of art created with Werner's unique textured and colorized salt technique invented in the 1980s.[2] Furthermore, the foundation aims to promote the education of the value and importance of salt in the history of humanity and as a new art form, as well as to encourage the values utilized by other innovative artists working with different and extraordinary media.[3]

Reviews and features on her work have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Art in America, Elle, Architectural Digest, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, ArtNews, Elle Decor, GQ, Flash Art, Hamptons Magazine, New York Post, l' Espresso, and Il Corriere della Sera.

Books

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Bettina Werner
  2. ↑ Bettina Werner
  3. ↑ Werner, Bettina The Salt Queen Foundation 2002-2007

External links