Gabriela Stellino

Year of birth: 1963.
Where do you live: Germany.
Your discipline: Painting | Graphics | New Media | Paper Works.
Website | Instagram

How did your early experiences studying at the National Art School Manuel Belgrano and the National Academy of Arts Pridiliano Pueyrredon shape your artistic journey?

The Fine Arts schools have given me extensive training. I have been fortunate to have teachers like Roberto Paez, Pippo Ferrari, Raul Scaranno, Georgina Labreau, and others—generous artists who lived what they did.

Your works seem to merge delicate watercolor with intricate paper reliefs. How did you come to experiment with the combination of these two elements?

My working method is based on continuity, on constant work.

The artwork takes shape through continuity.

One becomes familiar with the material and the idea.

Continuity seems essential to me for the image to grow.

And there is something that completes itself through repetition and change.

The series presents cut-out works in small format from the year 2024.

A relief is created. The cut creates space for the color, which is added punctually. 

The color, sometimes opaque, watery, or somewhat faded, evokes a vague memory. The color generates a special charm. The watercolor technique allows one to perceive how the moment of the brushstroke is captured on the paper.The time of the brushstroke lingers, trapped in the paper.

Gabriela Stellino | Tagesfarben, Work Nr. 5633 | 2021

What is the significance of using paper as a medium in your art, especially when it comes to creating shadows and playing with the empty space around your works?

These works flow from the surface into the spatial dimension.

Delicate pieces emerge with small and large spirals.

The play of shadows completes the image and shifts according to the light’s incidence.

Although it may seem random, the arrangement of the strips is carefully considered:

how the marks correspond to each other and how the black spots relate to one another.

The paper strips are not glued but meticulously interwoven.

Paper has been the foundation of my work for many years. I am deeply interested in the quality of the material—its fragility, its structure, and its interaction with ink or color. Its nature blends perfectly with the small format. The small format invites us to look closely. It demands concentration, guiding us toward subtlety and delicacy. It is like poetry—without grandiosity or spectacle. That which often goes unnoticed…

In your series “TAGESFARBEN / DAY COLORS,” you explore an interplay of color nuances. How do you approach the process of balancing repetition and variation within your collages and watercolors?

Color correspondences are the soul of this series.

Color and its possibilities. How a small patch of color can become surprisingly striking, how it communicates through value, how a palette can become forced or dissonant… with unruly colors or combinations that “don’t match.” And yet, all of this transforms into a new harmony.

How does color react? What holds the image together? These are questions that emerge in the process.

The different ways to read an image.

Gabriela Stellino | Serie Schiribizzi, Work Nr 6804 | 2023

Can you explain the creative process behind the “Moving Relief” works, particularly how the dynamic paper curls and their shadows contribute to the piece’s overall narrative?

These paper works are three-dimensional linear drawings, where the interplay of shadows not only completes the image but transforms with the incidence of light. The combination of various techniques opens up new expressive possibilities. It is crucial to maintain flexibility in ideas, constantly rethink them, and stay active in the creative process.

The fusion of techniques in visual arts expands the creative horizon, giving rise to works that transcend traditional boundaries.

Your work includes not only collage and watercolor, but also the unique “Print Relief” technique. Could you walk us through how you developed this method and how it influences the perception of your prints?

I started with two-dimensional prints. However, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the flat prints, so later I began incorporating cuts into the print, bending the edges of the cuts, and lifting the printed paper. What is characteristic of this process is the “multiplicity of perspectives,” where different views open up depending on the angle of vision. From a technical standpoint, it is not possible to produce identical sheets. Each sheet is a unique piece.

Gabriela Stellino | Work Nr 4460 | 2019

In your opinion, how do the transient qualities of your works—like the change in perspective depending on the viewing angle—connect with themes of fragility and impermanence?

The project Bildgeschehen (translated as “What Happens in the Image”) works with watercolors on paper and animation. This work with animated sequences literally begins in the Black Forest, where the landscape disappears into the fog: its shapes, open, with few contrasts and subtle nuances, along with the old conflict of the moving motif. The sketch is not yet finished, and yet everything has already changed. These images begin with sketches made in the landscape and notes on the arrangement of colors, chromatic tensions, how a shape progresses, how it disappears, what remains… My intention is to give the viewer the impression of being faced with a work in constant transformation. In these animated sequences, there is no story or anecdote. I try to follow an organic rhythm of the image. The “time” component is naturally integrated. From the beginning, I am interested in the flow of a moment… a moment that flows. The constant becoming… That awareness of transience is ultimately what shapes our experience. I believe that these concepts remain present in the content of the subsequent series.