Elena Ortica  was born in Milan in 1957. As a high school student she specialized in the plastic arts in Treviso, and later at the Art Academy of Venice. She spent her first year practicing sculpture in Carrara where she is able to work with the most beautiful marble available.
Thanks to the help of her father, the great opera tenor, Mario Ortica, she completed her studies and opened a sculpture studio. She began exhibiting in galleries such as Treves e l’Ars Italica of Milano and participated in many group shows. Her works have been sold in America, Germany and across Italy.

In 1990 she began teaching at the Oderzo Art School and in 2000 she opened a sculpture laboratory with her husband Gaetano Bugnano, also a sculptor. Their laboratory is a combined work shop and school where Elena holds daily classes in sculpture and her husband sculpts and executes works for other artists and clients. She also performs portraits in stone, marble and clay. Recently she has done the portrait of Giuliana Benetton of the renown Benetton family.

Regarding her style and passion, her works are figurative, searching above all to capture
the essence of her subjects. She is less interested in the form than the soul, life that emerges from a subjects expression, from the depth of his life.

She also does a wide range of sculpture with children as subjects, attempting to convey her optimism and gusto for life in their infinite joy and simplicity. Her optimism doesn’t preclude and intense study of the sources of evil and suffering, of the contradictions of our time. For Elena there is an need to look a subject deep inside a subject to understand the significance of their lives. All these contradictions are readily visible to whoever beholds her work.

Since 2000 she has been a member of IL Baglio, an association of Christian architects, painters, musicians, and sculptors. Working with these artisans has made her more aware and impassioned about sacred art in general, and, as such, she has designed and sculpted many pieces for churches throughout Italy.

Le opere di Gaetano >>>

Gaetano Bugnano was born in 1958 in the Southern Italian province of Crotone. His artistic formation came about through a mixture of art and craft. His works concentrate greatly on form, above all on form and stature.

He began sculpting in the 1970’s while working as a carpenter in industrial woodworking shops. There he gains a high level of craftsmanship in woodworking, cement which later will prove extremely useful and revealing in his work in wood, cement and marble. After finishing art school he opened an art and antiques restoration laboratory with his brotheras well as beginning to specialize in lute making.

Later he became attracted to abstract sculpture thanks to an encounter with Boccioni, whose works reflect his own formal tendencies and sensibilities in sculpture. As a result he applied to the Art Academy of Reggio Calabria. There he gets his first commission from the local government and through the use of cement forges a synthesis of his varied  plastic background.

After his studies he went north to Verona where he taught in the art institute. While there he expands his technical application using gesso and clay.. In 1992 he met his wife Elena, who as stated above had the same passion for sculpture and art in general.