Renata Boero is best known for her Cromogrammi: large canvases, recovered from the port of Genoa, free from the frame, covered with natural materials, works that renewed painting in the seventies. Not many people know, however, that these works grew out of her artist’s books, to be precise from the Brogliacci, in which the canvas is folded in book form. From these early works to the Cromolibri, the volume addresses the main themes of Boero’s art through a critical and biographical reading of her principal artist’s books. The books are made following a precise stylistic ritual, by soaking the various “pages” in a programmed way according to controlled times of immersion in the material as well as times of absence, of void, in folding, equally important in the score ideally created. A technique that the artist also studies and analyzes from a symbolic point of view to explore the color pigmentation in the chemical properties of natural materials.
Renata Boero was born in Genoa, where she was a pupil of Emilio Scanavino. In 1959 she exhibited a work at the Quadrennale di Roma, an event in which she again took part in 1986 and 1999. In the sixties she collaborated as a restorer with Caterina Marcenaro. This experience gave rise to the idea that the canvas, in order to dialogue with the space, must be free from the frame. Moreover, she began an impassioned work of documentation of natural substances that would give rise to the Cromogrammi. In 1974 she inaugurated the series of Specchi. With these works, one of which was exhibited for the first time in 1978 at the International Cultureel Centrum in Antwerp, she was invited to the Venice Biennale in 1982. Since the eighties she has continued her artistic research, which sees her engaged in several series: Blu di legno, Architectures, Enigmi, Crani, Acquerelli di San Diego, until the current series of the Germinazioni. She lives and works in Milan.
