Stefano Canturi is celebrating 25 years as a jeweller and craftsman with a public display of his previously “private artworks” – the sketches, the paintings and the mini-sculptures that were the inspiration and foundation for 10 of his most famous jewellery pieces.
On display in Sydney for the last week, The Canturi Art Exhibition Journey will move to Melbourne next week before moving onto Brisbane later this year and New York in 2014.
According to Canturi, the exhibition “is a journey” rather than “a traditional art exhibition”.
“Works are frozen moments in time from the point of inspiration, to birth of creation, to the finished piece,” he said.
“The sketches, paintings and sculpture are tactile, fluid and poetic, and reflect the mood and presence of my creation process.
“Painting, sculpting, drawing and engineering are all part of what I have always done – it’s who I am.”
The art works include drawings and paintings of his masterpiece ‘Satine’ created for Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge..
The collection also captures the creation process behind Canturi’s latest collection, Odyssey, which was designed to celebrate “25 years designing and crafting beautiful jewellery from a place of pure creativity and passion”.
Canturi said it was not an easy decision to make his private artworks available for public viewing.
“It’s a decision that I made over a long period of time before I became comfortable with it as all my work has been private for 25 years, so to open that up for public view was at first an unusual idea,” he said.
“However the more I thought about it and as I started to work on curating the collection that I would exhibit it became its own highly creative process that I thoroughly enjoyed.”
Canturi said the Sydney exhibition attracted a wide variety of visitors including “those who appreciate design and engineering such as architects, interior designers and fashion designers” as well as “my clients who are mostly curious to know how an idea then transitioned through various creative processes to become the final piece that they love”.
He stressed that none of the artworks were for sale.