Sofía Rossi Bunge

Owner of an enigmatic personality and a life marked by the permanent search of new experiences, Sofìa Rossi Bunge unfolds an entire universe of works that capture the essence of the spaces and contexts where they were conceived. 

As every artist who grew up within a family of collectors and painters – the Bunge Guerrico and the Alvarez Calderòn -, where art played a fundamental role in daily life, indefectibly her production was conditioned by it. Since she was a little girl, always carrying her drawing book, Sofìa adopted the habit to register everything that was around her; everything seemed to be stimulating and her activities were related with some artistic discipline. An even when she showed interest in music, painting prevailed. Later on, far from the dense years of religious school and the formal obligations that seemed to asphyxiate her talent for drawing and painting, her life moves to the city of Boston in the United States, where she studies at the Art Institute of Boston. She finishes her Degree in

Fine Arts and Graphic Design, works for the University with the international students, and simultaneously takes curses of photography, illustration, theatre, literature, dance and music at The American College of London, Harvard Extension School, Berklee College of Music, and later on at the Contemporary Music School in Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, even when specialized in Painting and Ceramics, painting was and still is her love, but doesn’t disqualify the possibility of experimenting with other mediums in the future. Because for an artist who made of travelling the main source of experiences, the sedentary becomes replaced by the nomadic, adopting a technique to fit these circumstances is absolutely necessary. Being able to manage acrylic, watercolor, ink, and charcoal, among others, oil on canvas remains her great love: “oil is flexible and I think that goes well with my personality. I like its smell and texture, what you can accomplish with oil, you can´t accomplish with any other kind of paint…”

Pragmatic, concrete, aware of her needs and limitations, Sofìa chooses the medium to express herself according to her life style, which breaks all structures; and she knows that as long as she has an ambulant home, her work would have to adjust to constant changes. Changes that inspire and nurture her, personally and artistically. None stop, constantly, because as soon as she apprehends a stimulus as a blank slate, her mind prepares to welcome the impact of the new; that shooting of information that occurs to those who wake up in different landscapes regularly. Therefore, images with a great amount of fantasy are born from the imaginary, inexistent characters which paradoxically look familiar; for some reason we can recognize them and even recognize ourselves in them.

Her work has been influenced by Frida Kalho, Louis Burgois, Rose Wiley, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, Alex Katz, Rosa Loy and the Neo-Surrealismus of the Leipziger Schule among others; this and more are artists that amaze her. Her works seems to follow no pattern, yet has profoundly and cautiously organized; although, lately she has been working in series, some sort of anchoring for a spirit that allows being surprised to rule. This kind of order avoids an imagination without boundaries, to overflow. Images stored in her memory that waiting for the right moment to come into existence. The serie “India” has the impact of the time lived Varanasi, one of the oldest and most sacred cities in India, where the solemn presence of antiquity and the power of religion are present in every aspect of daily life. Tradition and moral values confronting the occidental world, both worlds translated as one. Curiosity inquires when an artist like Sofia Rossi Bunge, born and raised in the center of the occidental culture, gets touched by Buddhism and Shamanism, and adopts a gipsy life as her own, turning herself into an eternal migrant. In other series such as “What a wonderful world for some people”, she is emphasizing social injustice and becomes defiant and denounces at the same time.

Traveling is her engine, her the impulse to the unknown, always searching for peoples eyes, those who come close to her art guided by their sensibility; the “street world scenario”. Having exhibited in Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, London, Boston, painting murals in cities as Varanasi, she searches for alternative places to show her work: that “street” space that she chooses, like a festival or nearby biennale; that she knows and can recognize her because she´s become a world citizen.

For some reason we choose certain roads without knowing why. In Sofia’s life, painting ensembles her mood, it is a needs no words. All she can and can´t say, can be read in her work: clear, aesthetically beautiful and formally impeccable. They talk about an artist who doesn’t abandon the girl even when the woman is telling the story. A charming imprint to look at, yet the charismatic characters save a question for us in their eyes that interpellate us, mostly by capturing our sight. A question each one of us should discover and eventually try to answer.

Sofia´s work is the result of the encounter of unconscious passions, the necessity to know and dig inside, outside, the almost obsessive impulse to communicate and a deep love for the others. All of those that go through her life, which later on she will immortalize in a canvas or paper… leaving the physical behind, but still carrying them within her memory, to follow the gipsy caravan to a new land.

Sofia Rossi Bunge was born in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1976. She works and lives in Basel, Switzerland.

"Wo niemand ich finde, ich finde mich selbst" 

Profile by Lic. María Carolina Baulo