2018 Catalogue Archive

Italian artist Stefano Marchetti’s brooch is a studied contrast of opposites. A blunt, rectangle created from a sheet of stainless steel over a sheet of silver becomes the backdrop for delicate and irregular shapes of gold that rise into space. A series of binary terms are suggested by these compositional and material choices: geometric and organic, matte and shiny, flat and three-dimensional, heavy and light, common and precious. But Marchetti is too canny to allow these differences to stand unchallenged, and small details, such as the delicate gold pins at the four corners of the stainless steel sheet, the subtle patina on the steel’s surface, the hidden sheet of silver and the scored lines on the gold, demand a reconsideration of where value and beauty lies. Stefano Marchetti studied jewelry at the Istituto Statale d’Arte Pietro Selvatico in Padua, Italy, and then sculpture at the Accademia di belle Arti in Venice, graduating in 1994. In 2016 he won the prestigious Herbert Hofmann jewelry prize at the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich, Germany. His work is featured in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh, MIMA in Middlesborough, United Kingdom, the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, Germany, Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, and the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands.