ELISABETTA SONDA
Born in the Netherlands, in Rotterdam, where she lived until the completion of her high school studies, Elisabetta Sonda settled in Milan in 1970 where she obtained a diploma as Interior Designer and studied the art of colour under Augusto Garau (member of MAC, Movimento per l’Arte Concreta). She started by painting on silk, then switched to canvas in 2000, preferably using oil, less frequently acrylic. Her favourite themes are flowers, gardens, water and still life; her style is partly abstract, with signs and colours unique to her personal vocabulary. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, especially in Genoa. In 2023 she held a personal exhibition in Chiavari and in 2025 personal exhibitions in Pietrasanta and Pistoia. She was awarded the exhibition prize at the 41st edition of Premio Firenze.
Through her paintings, Elisabetta Sonda gives shape to nature and the everyday objects that surround her, as if nature were revealed from within, from some garden hidden deep inside, yet no less “real” than the one the artist has before her eyes every day. In this inner garden, too, the seasons come and go, the light warms the earth, and water irrigates the land: everything has its place and performs its role. The difference lies in that seasons are life, light is feeling, and water memory. Elisabetta Sonda uses similitude as a way of understanding how nature outside and nature inside correspond, resemble each other, and are the same thing in the end. To bloom, to drop, then sprout again, wait for the sun, quench one's thirst with water, and even discover beauty in imperfection--in some irregular shape, in a broken vase, in a crooked branch. To bathe in light and blue, and then, gliding from above, dressed in green, to become leaf, tree, plant: simply nature, inside and out, without the need to ask for more.
Daniela Pronestì