Giulia Leonelli

Born in 1985 in France. Lives and works in France.

Visual Artist

Giulia Leonelli is a French/Italian artist who holds a doctorate degree in Visual Arts from University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she teaches as a printmaking instructor.

Her work is oriented toward a pictorial approach of printmaking, led by a musical aspiration and a poetic intent.

Her doctoral thesis Entendre le pictural discusses the temporal understanding of an artwork by experiencing its unfolding as space and time, and the implications of rhythm and sensation as philosophical attributes of art.

Giulia Leonelli’s work has been shown in several personal and collective exhibitions internationally (Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, United Kingdom and the United States).

After a BFA in Fine Arts at Rome University of Fine Arts, she enrolled at Sorbonne University in Paris in 2009. In 2012, she was chosen as a recipient for the French/American “Young Talents” award, for which she was selected to attend the MFA Studio Art Program at New York University. In New York, she met musician and composer Joe Fee, and their collaboration led to various projects combining music and visual arts.

Back in Paris, her encounter with master printmaker Bo Halbirk proved decisive. It was at the Atelier Bo Halbirk that Giulia Leonelli’s dedication to the art of printmaking found its most accomplished expression, notably through her research into polychrome printing. In 2016, the solo exhibition Mandolin Days at the Atelier Bo Halbirk highlighted her interest in letterpress and the production of limited-edition artist books.

In the fall of 2017, she participated in a three-month residency in New York, selected as a fellow artist by the Manhattan Graphics Center. There, she created the artist book ReWind, which is featured in several private and public collections, including the Manhattan Graphics Center Print Collection and the Kentler International Drawing Space. In 2019, following an artist residency at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Norwalk, Connecticut), she presented her work in the solo exhibition Tempo rubato: let’s steal Time at the Manhattan Graphics Center in New York.

In 2022, she was invited as a contemporary artist by Fabriano papermill to produce an etched work in order to present the aquatint technique in the book Printmaking Tales by Umberto Giovannini, a text published by Opificio della Rosa.

In 2024, she received the “First Honorary Award for outstanding work” at the 7th edition of the Mini Print Cantabria competition for her work Concrétion IV.

Giulia Leonelli’s approach of printmaking is driven by a tension towards the unresolved and fluctuating qualities of forms, suggesting a sense of flowing that figures both the material elements and effects as well as a reference to the passing of time.

This dynamic momentum, in its connivance with a typically baroque vitality, is often fulfilled in a quest for variation. For this reason, the artist is used to work in series, producing variable ensembles where several matrices are combined and assembled on the same sheet of paper.  While carving a metal plate, Giulia Leonelli always keeps in mind the possibility to create a variable sequence that could suspend the solidity of a form.  By etching the plate through chemical reactions and experimental processes, she often looks for accidental occurrences intended to embrace randomness. Then, when a rhythmic configuration has been attained, the artist proceeds by specific and meticulous interventions that will guide the shape to its final flourishing.

The use of colour is another fundamental part of her creative process. The chromatic research intervenes as a possibility to modify and variate the nature of the image itself. A lot of choices are made during the printing process, mixing the ink and looking for the right timbers and tonalities. As a result, the printing constitutes an essential creative step in Giulia Leonelli’s work.

The memory of a landscape, of an environment, comes to surface within an agglomeration of lines, or of an aquatint texture. The engraved shapes pursue the physical expression of a place without aiming for resemblance or for a figurative rendering. The pattern gives back to the paper something that could rather rejoin the curve of a sound.