ERMENEGILDO FRIONI | FriArte Roma
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed. It feels an impulsion, this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. Richard Bach
Giovanna Benzi, with virtuosities of sign and color, creates works in which sky and clouds become protagonists of aerial landscapes in which the silence of metaphysical memory is an imaginary ideal of stillness. [...]
MARCELLO PALMINTERI | Curator
The meteorological researcher would find in Giovanna Benzi’s artwork a curious phenomenological inventory on which to draw up variable forecasts. It is likely to believe that those who study clouds deal with a science that more than any other winks at poetry. Not surprisingly, among the observers of clouds, a prominent figure is Luke Howard (pharmacist with a passion for meteorology) that in 1802 classified for simplification the various forms of clouds: Cirrus, Cumulus and Stratus, from which we get all the modifications, composed and intermediate, writing about all this in the “Essay on the modification of clouds”, which proved to be very useful for the understanding of atmospheric phenomena. [...]
PASQUALE LETTIERI | Art critic
Pablo Picasso used to say “Even a well-painted rose can be revolutionary”. And I ask myself: “And if they were clouds”? The answer is given by the artist from Milan Giovanna Benzi, who made of clouds the unique motif of her pictorial representation. Conceptual or hyperreal works? I would say poetry of love and freedom. And she created with them an empathic relationship, of sentimental exchange, revolutionary in its essentiality. [...]
GRAZIELLA MELANIA GERACI | Art critic
A light that creates and decomposes shapes, iridescent colors capable of transforming soft entities into abstract spots, molds or sudden eruptions. These are the precious elements of a stylistic game that Giovanna Benzi applies to imaginary landscapes, places of the soul that reveals itself. Like Monet, the artist seems to analyze the chromatic variations on the same element. Her clouds are never identical to themselves as the sheaves of the French Impressionist are not, a meticulous study that amplifies the vibrations of the bright dust and determines the subjects and their presence on lumpy or shiny backgrounds. [...]
ERMENEGILDO FRIONI | FriArte Roma
Giovanna Benzi, through the shapes of the wind, weaves aerial landscapes of admirable beauty, inviting us to look up to return to our childhood. With virtuosity of sign and color, she creates artworks in which sky and clouds become the protagonists of celestial landscapes where the silence of metaphysical memory creates an imaginary ideal of stillness. The artist observes with curiosity and interest the work of the great artists of the past and of the modern, to communicate in her own language the oasis of beauty which is, fundamentally, a journey of an inner search, a glimmer of salvation sought beyond the contingency of everyday life. [...]
ORLANDO PIRACCINI | Art critic
It has been written that the painted clouds of Giovanna Benzi are subjects/symbolic objects, allegories, metaphors of something that is deeply connected to life, to the heart, to the feeling. For those who report them on the canvas, in short, they are real motions of the soul. If this is the case, the spectator should not limit himself to contemplate these paintings, which must be understood, deciphered, interpreted far beyond the apparent images. [...]
ERMENEGILDO FRIONI | FriArte Roma
It is always difficult to write something new for an artist, especially when the critics who have dealt with her have been able to grasp the deepest meaning of her work with extreme finesse. But it is easy for me to perceive how Giovanna Benzi’s work lives on metaphors, hiding from the distracted observer, behind a cloud, an entire inner world where feelings are shaken, where joy and fear have an uncertain border.[...]
CARMELO UCCHINO | Writer
The pictorial production of Giovanna Benzi is immediately expressed and fills the center of the field with some significant canvases and with a strong symbolic value (“Verso il mistero”, “Bagliore”, “Voglia di pioggia”, “L’ultima luce”, “In attesa”) that caress, with their dreamy, fantastic and dreamlike aura, vague gothic atmospheres of that Nordic Romanticism in which we find one of its greatest exponents in William Turner with all its charm of effects and halos.[...]
TIZIANA BOCCI | Scrittrice
An arduous undertaking for this terrestrial babel of ours. The ability to find an effectual language, in common with the events outside and the emotions inside, that is good nourishment for our vital creative Eros: essential for the conscious, serene and satisfying existence of every creature. Creative Eros of which creation is imbibed. Use words, signs, drawings, universal signals, simple and sacred, which we really need to live fully, together, under and within this sky. [...]