Biography

Roberto Bernardi was born in 1974 in Todi.

 

He started painting at a very young age, his first oil paintings date back to the first half of the eighties. His obsession with detail and learning traditional painting techniques influenced his artistic formation.

After finishing high school in 1993 he moved to Rome where he began working as a restorer at the church of San Francesco a Ripa, but he soon moved on from painting restoration to devote himself fulltime to the creation of his own works of art. After initially painting landscapes and portraits, Bernardi moved towards a new form of realism closely related to hyperrealism.

In September 1994 Bernardi held his first solo exhibition, gaining the recognition of both public and local critics. Since then Bernardi has held 15 solo exhibitions worldwide between New York, London, Paris, Detroit and Singapore, his works have been included in 25 exhibitions in international museums and over 100 group shows in many worldwide art galleries.

The turning point in his artistic style took place in the early 2000s with increasingly frequent trips to New York. In 2004 Bernardi moved to Manhattan for a short period and worked in a studio on 73rd street. During this period his works were strongly influenced by the American culture. Thanks to the promotion of his gallery, he entered the New York art market and began to attend the prestigious art world of the Big Apple.

During this period he met many artists such as Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Tom Blackwell, Ralph Goings, Charles Bell etc. with whom he then exhibited many times in group exhibitions in various international museums.

From 2004 to 2010 Bernardi participated in numerous artistic projects sponsored by American and European collectors along with other artists of the hyperrealist movement. Among the most important are the "Zurich project" and "Hamburg project" in 2007, in 2008 the "Las Vegas project" and the "Montecarlo project" during the Formula One Grand Prix and “Bejing project” where Bernardi was invited, during the 2008 Olympic Games, by American politician Eliot Cutler who lived and worked in Beijing for several years.  After  two weeks of intense travel around China and meetings with many Chinese politicians and artists including Li Songsong, Cutler commissioned the artist Roberto Bernardi to paint a series of works inspired by this Chinese experience.

The following year, in 2009, these works were exhibited in a solo exhibition in New York entitled "Beijing project" at the Bernarducci.Meisel.Gallery.

n 2010, the Italian multinational oil and gas company, ENI, added Bernardi to the group of young talents from all over the world to uniquely interpret every moment of Eni's communication and commissioned Bernardi to add a work to their prestigious art collection.

Since 2012 Bernardi took part in an international museum tour that began at the Tübingen Museum in Germany and then continued in 13 other museums around the world.

This exhibition tour included the prestigious Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Spain), the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (England), the New Orleans Museum Of Art (U.S.A.), the Oklahoma City Museum Of Art (U.S.A.), the De Bellas Artes De Bilbao Museum (Spain), the Kunsthal Museum Rotterdam (Holland), the Tampa Museum Of Art (U.S.A.) etc.

In 2014 Bernardi was invited to the "Biennale of Contemporary Realism 2014" at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (U.S.A.).

Over the last decade Bernardi's works have evolved, his hyperreal compositions are increasingly influenced by the Pop Art movement and in 2015 the  Oxford University Press Editions included one of his paintings in the book "Sugar and Sweets" by D. Goldstein.

This work represents lollipops of different colors placed vertically on a black background. In 2016, MONA, Museum Of Old And Modern Art in Tasmania, published Bernardi's paintings in the publication "On the Origin of Art". In 2022 the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid acquired a Bernardi painting and in 2023 the same museum acquired a big sculpture to add to its prestigious collection.