CONTRO, ANTONIA

There, 2000
C-print, graphite on matboard
11 x 9 inches
Signed Edition of 50

(United States, b. 1957)

Chicago artist Antonia Contro received her MFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and her BA in studio art, art history and Italian from Northwestern University. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's, Contro was known primarily as a painter. In the mid-1990's she started using Polaroid materials as she found the unpredictable qualities of the film compatible with her thematic explorations of journey and transformation. Contro enlarges her Polaroid images as chromogenic development prints and then incorporated elements of collage. The works hint at the surreal as the artist navigates concepts such as travel, discovery, and equilibrium, inspired by her own Venetian heritage.