Federica Frati, The Judgement (Tarots), 2023, Woodcut

Cut on wood Federica Frati is an Italian artist born in 1977 who lives lives and works in Brecia, Italy. She is graduated from art school Foppa where she learned the main artistic techniques. After two years of attendance at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, she graduated in art at the University of Milan in modern literature. Since 2009 Federica creates engraving prints at the Luciano Pea laboratory. In parallel to the works of engraving, the artist produced from 10’s paintings following models and techniques of medieval painting: the synthesis and the solemnity of some frescoes, the non-descriptive urgency, the glimmers of gold, and “verdaccio” backgrounds, mark the pictorial production of Federica. The sign becomes prevalent and predominant in her paintings as in her prints, so often the paintings and engraving prints were exhibited together. Her practice investigates the inner reality of human being as part of Nature, a Nature that forgot its primordial and mythological tie with the Gods and the magic awesomeness of the ancient human societies. This emptiness has left room to the Technique and to a big sense of loss too. This feeling is in her whole production that is made by different series: I Nani, etchings and acquatints investigates the deformity and sufferance of being different from the others ; The Idols, for which paintings realised with the ancient technique of medieval tempera hatching, that makes us think about the sense of the divine in our society, the subjects are modern musicians or modern Gods ; Tarots that are a deep analysis of the different declinations of human souls, through the iconography of the Tarots. The technique is the cut on wood (xilografia) ; Souls and Cold Sky are wild monotypes. Souls is the struggle of Human being when they understand that are in a world dominated by an empty sky. Cold Sky represents people aware of their state during their daily activities and Strings that is a piece of acrylic glass engraved with the same cuneiform characters found on Cyrus’s Cylinder. It holds the original monotypes, depicted with limited colour in order to emphasize the protagonist: the primitive and primordial sign. String also is the symbolic depiction of mankind’s struggle to regain self-awareness and inner truth. Only through education can mankind attain wisdom to progress through life’s odyssey.