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Considered one of the major artists responsible of the revival of feminine surrealism, Bona DE MANDIARGUES (b. 1926, Rome - 2000, Paris) began to exhibit in the early 1950s, in Italy and Paris.
Between 1950 and 1956 the artist produced small paintings in which the recurring subjects are anthropomorphic landscapes, roots and monstrous creatures inserted in an imaginary and metaphysical space. In 1958, Bona (the name she assigned herself) began to cut up her husband's clothes and the shreds were sewn onto already used canvases, which resulted in fabric collages that would mark the renewal of experimentation in her works.
Her work stems from a self-research that finds in the themes of metamorphosis, animal totemism and fantasy the means to express a divided and fragmented identity. After a formative phase Bona arrived at a figurative painting nourished by fantastic suggestions, which interprets nature based on the surrealist research of the wonderful and the disturbing. Her work is enriched with references to the cultures with which she comes into contact, both in the chromatic ranges, the style and in the subjects and symbols.
In 1967 she gives birth to her daughter Sibylle and from this moment on, Bona moves towards new directions of research. She takes up painting again, with a series of neo-metaphysical canvasses that reference the origins of Surrealism whilst still developing her assemblage works which are centered on her totemic animal, the snail. She also intensifies her graphic production, focusing on erotic drawings inspired by tantric art. The nineties bring the theme of the portrait in the foreground, both with a series of tributes to historical protagonists of twentieth-century culture and with an exploration of the self through self-portraits and family portraits.
Her first major retrospective Bona de Mandiargues: Remaking the World was presented in 2023 at the Nivola Museum in Sardegna, Italy.