Biography of Laura Michelino
The painter and printmaker Laura Michelino was born in 1959 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. From 1978 to 1981, she studied at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo, where she took drawing classes in the studio of Carlos Fajardo and watercolor classes in that of Rubens Matuck. Thanks to her contacts with Mario Gruber, Laura Michelino moved to Paris in 1982. From 1982 to 1983, she studied engraving at the Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter. Ten years later, in 1992, she deepened her knowledge of the etching technique with BBernard Pras (who developed the principle of aquagravure in the late 1980s). If the artist began her artistic activities by focusing on engraving, she will add ceramics, then painting. Living in France for more than 40 years, Laura Michelino collaborates and produces her own engravings at the Atelier Papou, created by Bernard Pras in Montreuil (printing multiples for, among others, Bram Bogart, Bengt Lindstrom, Karel Appel, Corneille).The city is one of his favorite subjects. It will be the synthesis of five years of research focused on the representation of three cities: São Paulo, her native city, New York which reminds her of it, and Montreuil where she lives and which resembles the outskirts of São Paulo. Let's let her speak: "Why cities: the starting point of my attempts to reconstruct the chaos of megacities, was, for my native São Paulo, thirty-six photos that I took when I lived there, in 2008, and the images found in the press of the sixties are the starting point. I used a single postcard from New York for all the prints and paintings, and pencil and pen sketches for Montreuil. The apparent disorganization of these cities intrigues me and I try to draw them, wanting to understand the graphics and dynamics of these landscapes, something I cannot achieve. I try to reproduce them in linocuts and xylogravures, but it doesn't satisfy me, so I cut them out, I mix them up by gluing them back together, by giving them color, without being able to find the exact balance between order and disorder that fascinates me in reality. This urban confusion is a challenge for a relentless drawer. That's why I have a lot of work ahead of me! I have used different media and techniques in my work."Her painting, like her printmaking, offers the artist a strong and very personal aesthetic.Laura Michelino has participated in numerous collective and personal exhibitions, notably in Brazil, France and Germany.
