Origins

Gabriela Spector, Argentine-Swiss artist, was born in northern Argentina, in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán.

She studied for six years at the “Universidad Nacional de Tucumán”, Facultad de Bellas Artes. After graduating, thanks to a scholarship, she moved to Italy to deepen her training, devoting herself in particular to sculpture.

In Milan she worked at the Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, using the bronze-casting technique.

Her training was enriched by attending the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, where she perfected her marble-working techniques.

She has a permanent exhibition space at the Prioria La torre (San Sisinio Church) in Mendrisio, and a studio at the Ruchat courtyard in Riva San Vitale, in Canton Ticino, where she has lived and worked as a sculptor and painter since 1994.

She has never lost touch with Argentina, returning every year to nourish her relationship with her roots, her “first world”.

Since 2020 she has taught at the CSIA (Centro Scolastico per le Industrie Artistiche) in Lugano.

Work

An artist with a predominantly figurative vocation, Gabriela Spector brings to her sculpture emotions, gestures and memories deeply tied to her own personal experience.

Her artistic activity develops along two distinct lines of research – one sculptural, made of plasters, marbles and bronzes, the other pictorial – yet both share the same attention to the intimacy of the human figure.

In particular, the themes of the body and motherhood are at the heart of the project -Voglia di Pancia- (Belly Craving), casts of the bodies of pregnant women representing the very desire for motherhood – which took shape in 2002 in an exhibition and in a book recounting the experiences of the women involved.

The projects Maps of Memory and Madretierra Mapas, on the other hand, are linked to the theme of migration and travel, intimately connected to her family’s “wandering” tradition; they sprang from the discovery of a sizeable collection of geographical maps. The artist transformed and used these maps to give life to sculptural and pictorial works in which the world becomes the backdrop and canvas on which to tell, ultimately, once again the story of man, the tangles of his inner maps, the hidden landscapes of his soul.

On the theme of travel, immigration and identity, she has repeatedly worked through her bronzes, and later through paintings and sculptures using geographical maps.

These were first presented in the 2007 exhibition Maps of Memory, Sala delle grasce, Pietrasanta (Lucca), Italy.

These aspects remain central also in her most recent cycle of sculpture, Poesia quotidiana. She has also made commissioned works, of medium and large size, and works constantly on the development of new projects.

Awards

(Curriculum in exhibitions)

1988
First Prize for drawing, “Concorso Paisaje de los Valles Calchaquíes”, Tucumán.

1989
First Prize (group) for the “Mural del Museo dell’Industria dello Zucchero” (Sugar Industry Museum Mural), Tucumán.

1991/92
Scholarship awarded by the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán.

1992/93
Scholarship awarded by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara.

1996
Third prize at the “VIIº Simposio internacional de esculturas en madera”, Sardinia.