Serena Depero

Born in Rome, Italy, in 1974, and moved to New York City in 1988. Studied figure drawing at the Art Students League of New York, and then attended Brown University in Providence, RI, from where she graduated in 1995 with a BA in Visual Arts and Italian Studies.

From 1995 to 1999, she returned to the Art Students League where she assisted Charles Hinman’s mixed media class for two years, and won a Merit Scholarship, which allowed her to study full time with Bruce Dorfman. Under Hinman and Dorfman’s guidance she moved away from painting, and experimented with various materials such as paper, wood, plaster and plastic. Her work became gradually more tactile and abstract. The work of artists such as Eva Hasse and Antoine Tapies offered constant inspiration.

She then attended Hunter College, where she continued to experiment with different materials and created installations out of her three-dimensional objects. Towards the end of her study, she started painting on canvas again with a newfound fascination for the innate qualities of paint and a fresh perspective informed by her exploration of three-dimensional materials. Fragments of her objects and installations made their way back into her canvases. She graduated in 200 with an MFA in Painting.

Depero continues to paint on canvas and to create objects made from found materials. A fascination wih the materials themselves has been a driving force in her work. She constructs paintings using layers of color, which are applied based on a series of formal and intuitive choices. She often works and reworks a piece unil each shape falls into place. Similarly, in her three-dimensional work, she final result. Nature and personal memories are a recurrent theme in her work.

Depero lives, works and maintains studios in New York City and in Kingston, NY. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. She is part of a group of international artists called Across the Bridge, and a member of the Kingston Arts Society.