GIOVANNI GELLONA | SPIRITUAL & SURREAL POP

GIOVANNI GELLONA | SPIRITUAL & SURREAL POP

“Since childhood, I have been constantly searching where the spiritual and the aesthetic go hand in hand. I dabbled in theater, dance, singing, and many other areas. I wanted to be a religious person and a pop star. I kept wandering around until I realized the path to enlightenment was in my own hands. Painting was the answer. “
– Giovanni Gellona

Giovanni Gellona (b. 1980) is a Chilean painter who has dabbled in different fields of the arts: photography, video, dance, design, and music. Over the last few years, he has been fully dedicated to painting,
a discipline he had practiced since childhood when he painted his first portraits. Giovanni studied for two years for a BA in Fine Arts; however, his pictorial development has been self-taught.
In 2004, he was invited to London to take part with several of his portraits in various art books published in Europe and the United States, such as “Marilyn in Art” by Roger Taylor and “Diana in Art” by Mem Mehemet. The latter earned him a mention and exhibition of his work in London’s Daily Mail, Italy’s La Repubblica, and Vietnam’s Dantri newspapers.
In addition to his development as a painter, Giovanni worked for two years as a dancer with the “Distinguido Cuerpo de Baile Maniquí” in Panoramix, a TV show broadcasted by Chilevisión.
When he stopped working in television, he held his first exhibition entitled “National Glamour,” a solo gallery show, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Sheraton Hotel in Chile. The exhibition was born as an initiative from the artist to make a tribute to the most outstanding women of Chilean popular culture. This project was carried out with the collaboration of significant figures, including Isabel Allende, Verónica Villarroel, Cecilia La Incomparable, Liliana Ross, and Cecilia Bolocco.
After this exhibition, Giovanni began his career as a photographer, a highlight being the work done for one of his great muses, the lyrical singer Veronica Villarroel. He also participated in the Dutch book “40 ajar, 40 verhalen, Chileense Vluchtelingen en Solidariteit” (40 Years, 40 Stories, Chilean Refugees and Solidarity).
In 2007, Gellona started a deeper connection with the musical arts. At that time, he painted the cover of the “Los Updates” EP, a solo album of Jorge Gonzalez (Los Prisioneros) in which Giovanni also sings the chorus. Thanks to this, Gellona released an EP and a solo album in the following years.
After this musical experience, his artistic work concentrated entirely on painting.
In 2018, he presented the solo exhibition “Fe, Sangre y Mestizaje” (Faith, Blood, and Miscegenation), a series of paintings inspired by characters and situations of the Spanish conquest of Chile.
In this project, Leonor Varela, Héctor Noguera, and Federico Sánchez stand out as models and embody three significant figures of Chilean history.

In early 2019, Giovanni began working with Eduardo Lira, owner of the Eduardo Lira Art Gallery, where he presented the exhibition “Drama y Belleza” (Drama and Beauty), an allegory to the aesthetic of everyday life. He also participated in the collective exhibition “30 años de la caída del Muro de Berlín”
(30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall) in 2019, among others. With the idea of expanding the scope of his art, Giovanni participated in the exhibition “There Are No Boundaries” (2019) at the Provenance Art Gallery in Manila, Philippines, where he presented a portrait of Gabriela Silang, a heroic woman who fought against the Spanish conquest.
The work had a significant impact and was acquired by the J.P. Morgan Bank in Hong Kong. In 2020, Gellona participated again at the Provenance Art Gallery in an event organized by UNICEF Philippines in favor of the fight against child grooming. His painting was sold a week before the exhibition. Now, Giovanni is getting inspiration from muses of the Haitian community in Chile and from those who can bring love to this world.

“Painting was the answer. Something I’ve been doing since I was seven years old.
Taking up this path has been a revelation, an encounter with images, ideas, and beauty, which makes me more and more passionate every day. Through this discipline, and with the creative power that all living beings have, I began to create a world that seeks to connect people with the magical and sublime”.

– Giovanni Gellona

Getting To Know: Giovanni Gellona

Art Market Magazine: Please share the background of your artistic journey. Did you grow up in a creative environment? What led you into the contemporary art field as a professional artist?

Giovanni Gellona: I was lucky to grow up in an art environment. My maternal great-grandmother, Olga, was a painter, and my great-grandfather won a caricature contest at the Museo Bellas Artes in Santiago. However, my parents encouraged my creativity the most since they always nurtured me with all kinds of crafts. Unlike many other artists, my first inspiration was the eyes of my beautiful mother; in the 80s, she was a cosmetologist in Santiago de Chile, so her eyelids were beautiful canvases painted for me. Besides the mother’s makeup ritual, I liked that I painted in my notebooks with her makeup pencils the most.
My father, for his part, always helped me with crafts; for students with bad grades like me, a father like him was incredible.
My father taught me that with dedication, a small craft can be worthy of a museum. Thanks to my parents, I discovered the beauty of color, delicacy, and commitment to beauty, which is the most crucial thing in my journey as an artist.
As a restless artist, I have participated in various activities that have nurtured my art; I have done dance, photography, music, film, and even television, and each experience has contributed significantly to my art.
I always needed to try to grow and learn, but at 33, I decided to leave everything to return to the first thing I did with love in this world, painting beauty.

Art Market Magazine: Where your inspiration comes from? Would you say that your art is influenced by other artists or a specific art field?

Giovanni Gellona: My art is influenced by something that, for me, is of divine origin; it is like an external force that I try to channel. Furthermore, a great power of inspiration is the beings of light that accompany me every day of my life, filling them with love and spirituality, very relevant themes in my work. However, other excellent sources of inspiration are pop culture, creative photographers, filmmakers, actors, designers, dancers, etc.
Of this culture, the one that stands out the most is music. Music has always been a great inspiration in many of my works.
Lastly and most importantly, the viewer, I always wonder how to connect with he/she. How to delight the viewer? What emotion could people see in my work experience?
It is a great satisfaction to feature my work. In my art, I always try to create new worlds, people, planets, the universe, and all the variety of life I am passionate about and inspired by.

Art Market Magazine: Let’s talk about your unique technique. Please tell us about the entire work process, from the step of the idea until the final outcome.

Giovanni Gellona: My technique has always been a search, but I am going through those periods of satisfaction these days. I do not have an academic background; quite the contrary, I define myself as self-taught, and like many, it has taken me years to reach the current results. My creative process is based on information; I aim to isolate myself as much as possible and dedicate myself to connecting with the music, images, and story of my source of inspiration.
I’m a bad reader, but when creating a collection, I read a lot. After wandering a lot, my mind creates an image in a kind of divine connection; more than an image, it is a vision that captures my full attention and is the maximum supply for my art.
I usually have these visions before going to sleep, and in fact, it is at that moment that I manage to identify who will be my models for the next painting. At the time of painting, it can be with the live model or with a photograph that I take myself. This stage is critical because it is a way of connecting with the final result.
When painting on canvas or wood, the first strokes are always difficult for me, the nervousness of the world that will be revealed to my eyes always causes me positive anxiety, but once that stage is over, everything flows accompanied by my cats and music. Great masters like Da Vinci or Caravaggio are a source of inspiration and learning.
Using techniques such as smudge or prime painting, little by little, I progress in my artistic style.
I started with hyperrealism, but today I connect with the soul of things, a style I have called Spiritual & Surreal Pop.

Art Market Magazine: From your personal journey in the art field, what will be your advice to the young artist looking for a way of development?

Giovanni Gellona: I would tell the new generations to connect with the most positive emotions of humanity; this will help to change this feeling of negativity that exists in the world today. Being an artist is a great profession and responsibility, like a scientist or doctor. Skill and work must be maximized, and we should always give our best. It is also essential to be grateful for this creative gift because, through this discipline, human beings have been able to carry out great works that we still admire.

“My art is influenced by something that, for me, is a divine origin; it is like an external force that I try to channel. Furthermore, a great power of inspiration is the beings of light that accompany me every day of my life, filling them with love and spirituality, very relevant themes in my work.” -Giovanni Gellona

Art Market Magazine: What’s the future hold? Any special exhibitions in the upcoming months?

Giovanni Gellona: Right now, I am finishing a couple of portraits of two Haitian friends (Victoria and Sadlin), both beautiful beings of light. This new collection is highly inspired by the Haitian culture that has come to Chile, people of effort and sacrifice. I wanted to portray them in wood, a fantastic support worthy of kings and gods. On the other hand, I will start some collections for Conde Contemporary Gallery inspired by two movie classics, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, both released in 1939 and starring women I love and admire.
Also, I would like to do something in Italy because since I was little,
I have been amazed by the beauty of the Italian culture, its artists, and their great works; I would love to get an exhibition in Italy, and I am looking the right muse for this project.

See the full article in Art Market Magazine Issue #82