Gabriela Maria Müller. Anima naturae

Bally Artist of the Year Award 2019

25.0901.11.2020





Gabriela Maria Müller (1963), Cœurs sacrés (Sacred Hearts), detail, 2018-2019, elm seed, voile, iron and wooden frame, 260 x 260 cm

Palazzo Reali hosts an exhibition dedicated to Gabriela Maria Müller, winner of the twelfth edition of the 2019 Bally Artist of the Year Award. The artist has been selected by the Fondazione Bally due to the high quality of her submission and its close adherence to the theme “On the nature of the world”. The work, entitled Cœurs sacrés, invites us to reflect on the unstoppable nature of change. Created between 2018 and 2019, Cœurs sacrés is formed of a large spiral composed of thousands of dried seeds gathered from a single elm tree wrapped in wooden framed voile, placed in turn within a quadrilateral metal structure.

Presented on the first floor of Palazzo Reali, the exhibition features the award-winning Cœurs Sacrés together with a selection of artwork created between 2007 and 2020. The theme is Nature, examined in detail, in a scenography that creates a dialogue between the artworks through meticulous and introspective manual work. The vibration of the artist’s inner space and journey, intimately linked to the sacredness of Nature, can be felt throughout the exhibition.

This exhibition is a significant first milestone in the multi-year collaboration agreement between MASI Lugano and the Fondazione Bally per la Cultura in 2019.

  • Palazzo Reali Venue

  • via Canova 10, 6900 Lugano

Biography

Born in 1963 in Teufen (Canton of Appenzell) and a Ticino citizen by adoption, Gabriela Maria Müller is essentially self-taught, although she attended the School of Applied Arts in St. Gallen. A further formation in occupational therapy expanded her technical and artisanal range in painting, sculpture, 3D, textile, installations and video. Her artwork has been acquired in public collections, including Canton Ticino’s, as well as private collections. She has exhibited in Paris and Venice in 2017, at the Villa Pia Museum (Erich Lindenberg Art Foundation) in Ticino, in Porza in 2016, and at the Vincenzo Vela Museum in Ligornetto in 2019. Her profound and sensitive connection to nature, nurtured by her rural surroundings, provides her with an inexhaustible source of inspiration, visibly reflected in each of her artworks. Her meticulous arrangement of natural elements (seeds, leaves, blooms, pollen and soil) produces new and sophisticated forms when juxtaposed with the structure where they originated.