Collection: Roberta Gattel

Introduction

Roberta Gattel (born 1990) is an Italian visual artist, illustrator, and scholar based in the United She graduated in Venice in Painting and in Philosophy. She specialized in History, in Intercultural and Postcolonial Studies and she recently completed a MA in Women's Studies at the University of York, in England. She has experience working as a Literature, History and Philosophy teacher in Italian state schools, collaborating with independent publishing houses and international magazines, both as author and illustrator, and she is currently continuing her studies in England as a researcher in the field of Gender Studies.

She is interested in women’s history, in working class women’s agency, in the role of the stereotype in the construction of ideas, in the deconstruction of rhetorical devices, in the invisibility of discriminated categories in cultural spaces and in the intersection between patriarchy, colonialism, and climate disaster. Her work is characterized by an intersectional approach that takes into account gender, race, class, sexuality, colonialism and disability, with a strong focus on contemporary politics and on Global South feminisms.

Artistic journey

Gattel is an artist who favors a visual approach focusing most of her artistic research on drawing and on the use of images. Her artistic practice is characterized by pencil, pastel and ink drawing on paper with a strong figurative language ranging from the graphic to the tonal.

Drawing represents the starting point of Gattel’s research, both as a tool for visual investigation and as a space for reflection. For Gattel, figuration is the most suitable medium for establishing a direct and intimate relationship with the image. It creates the space for observing, studying, narrating reality, and the possibility for connecting with the viewer.

Her first series of works (2010-2013) is entirely monochrome and characterized by the small dimension of the pieces (the largest ones do not exceed the size of an A4). All the drawings have a dreamlike imprinting with surreal scenes and evanescent tonal touches. The drawings focus on women and on their bodies: they are bodies created by the male gaze for the male gaze, returned to the blank page in search of their humanity, overcoming their own objectification. These bodies are naked, wounded, violated, abandoned, but also proud, aware, and defiant.

Artistic process

Gattel's artistic process has been marked by a constant relationship between study and drawing, which the artist perceives as complementary. Gattel has never been able to separate her academic research from her artistic production: they have constantly fed and stimulated each other, helping her reflect and decipher reality, and transmit content. Her imaginative universe is nourished by her knowledge of Western classics (Gattel studied Latin and Ancient Greek for years), by a strong passion for modern and contemporary Literature (which led her to become an author herself), and by an unquenchable curiosity about History, its narratives, and its instrumental uses. Reflections of her humanistic background can be found throughout her artistic production, from her first drawings in 2010 to her latest installations in 2025, which show literary quotations, artistic and cinematic cameos, references to historical and contemporary events. The underlying theme of Gattel’s research is highly reflexive and relational, and aimed at the pursuit of social justice. 

Roberta Gattel Drawing | Article | Photo |

PERSONAL PROFILE
Women’s Studies MA student. Background in Philosophy, Intercultural and Postcolonial Studies, Art History. Research interests: the role of the stereotype in the construction of ideas, deconstruction of rhetorical devices, invisibility of discriminated categories in cultural space, social media and knowledge building. Work experiences in educational and pedagogical fields.

EXHIBITION

2024~2027 Curatorial project, ART NYC

2025 Refreshment, Group Show, Space 776, New York 

          Satellite art Fair, GyaGyaGya(Tokyo), Miami

2026 Group show, space 776, New York (forth coming)

          Solo Exhibition, Venice (forth coming)