Vera Bugatti: Street Painting, Anamorphosis, and the Ethics of Art

Key facts

• Vera Bugatti was born in Brescia in 1979.
• She holds a degree in Cultural Heritage Conservation from Parma.
• She has worked as a researcher, in museums, and as a librarian for 14 years.
• She has been active since 2008 and specialized in anamorphic street painting since 2015.
• She has painted in over 20 countries including Italy, Netherlands, France, Germany, Ireland, Croatia, Austria, Malta, Sweden, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal, Spain, Latvia, Russia, Great Britain, Bulgaria, Belgium, USA, Mexico, UAE, and India.
• Her latest work 'DE(ath)HORNING' was painted at Ifo Center Outdoor Gallery in Bromolla, Sweden.
• The work addresses surgical dehorning of rhinos as an anti-poaching measure.
• Rhino horn can fetch up to $95,000/kg on the black market.
• Demand comes from Southeast Asia, especially China, where powdered horn is used in traditional medicine and as an aphrodisiac.
• All five rhino species are critically endangered.
• Bugatti describes her style as figurative, surreal, dreamlike, magical realist, sacred, pantheistic, melancholic, and disturbing.
• She prefers the term 'urban art' or 'contemporary art' over 'street art'.
• She began with madonnaro street painting in 2003, copying Caravaggio's Judith and Holofernes.
• She uses a grid technique, long radiator brushes, and mixes colors directly on the wall.
• She favors black and yellow and rarely uses pure white.
• Her creative process involves collaging cut-out body parts to create characters.
• In 2019 she created intimate monochrome works in abandoned places after a health crisis.
• Works include 'Non ne so di più di quest’opera di colui che la legge con attenzione', 'Disease', and 'Le celle sono il luogo più doloroso'.
• At the Link festival in Brescia, a passerby was disappointed that her mural 'Aut Aut' was permanent.
• She now seeks slower travel by train and projects in abandoned places.