Central to Adelaide Cioni’s practice is an exploration of colour. Brightness explodes from the surface of her images creating an immersive space for the viewer to inhabit. Employing shape, pattern and dimension, her use of form fills the space. Despite her matte application of paint and flat surfaces, there is depth to her images, her minimal colour blocking, and neutral backgrounds create an endless space. Cioni’s work draws from the canons of Italian painting, from Pascali, Novelli and Merz, her primary influences, to employing the same shade of pink as Giotto and della Francesca. Her colour choices are rich, and her masterful application of paint is almost velvety in the thickness of its concentration. Her work is joyful, there is a youthful exuberance and wonder to her minimal depiction of subjects like ice-creams. What Cioni demonstrates through her body of work is the seductive nature of colour, her subjects are the means rather than the ends, an opportunity to explore the expansive possibilities of colour in itself.

Adelaide Cioni studied drawing at UCLA, Los Angeles, and has a BA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. With an MA in contemporary history and a master’s degree in Literary Translation, for ten years she translated American literature (John Cheever, Lydia Davis, David Foster Wallace, amongst others). In 2012 she finished the translation of Cheever’s journals and decided to quit translating literature, thereby she started her artistic practice.

Her work moves at the intersection of textile, painting, and performance. The constant elements at the core of her practice are drawing, an absence of narration and a feminist viewpoint. Over the past year she has been connecting her work to music and dance, in a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach. 

She lives and works between Spoleto (IT) and London.

Adelaide Cioni

Totem for Greta, white snake, 2023