Maurizio Bonfanti

Maurizio Bonfanti, son of the painter Angelo Bonfanti, was born in Bergamo in 1952. He began his artistic education at the Liceo Artistico in Bergamo and also attended courses in etching at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bergamo. He also studied modern literature at the Università Statale in Milan. He left university in 1973 and continued to pursue his career as a painter. From 1976 to 1983 he taught at the Liceo Artistico, Bergamo and since then has been teaching drawing and visual communications at a design and advertising school in Bergamo. From the end of the 1970s, he worked mainly with etching but then began to work exclusively with paint. As a painter he has experimented different techniques influenced by his knowledge of etching with themes like the human body, nature and urban landscapes. He has produced several cycles of works, in particular many based on religious themes.

Since 1978 Bonfanti works have been shown in many personal and collective exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. He has had much success in numerous one-man and group exhibitions in Europe the USA and Ireland.

Bonfanti works from his studio in Bergamo near his home in Torre Boldone.

“The challenge which the artist takes up, on his own behalf and ours, is to accept the subtle and rather worrying question of our presumed superiority as living beings over the symbolic value of inanimate objects. Or at least, the meaningful contribution objects can make to our need to see in material form our thoughts, fears, nightmares and secret hopes.” - Maurizio Bonfanti

“Bonfanti’s work accepts the provocation generated by this implicit doubt and serves these material presences by conferring on them the dignity and breathing space of painting.” – Fernando Noris