Ibiza Art Expo

Elizabeth Koning (1966, Netherlands | Italy)

'People will remain my most important subject`

For many years Elizabeth Koning lived in Milan, in Italy. She moved to London and back to Milan again working as a model. After a while she changed her job and started organising and managing a modeling agency. This is how she came into contact with major fashion houses. The fashion scene, but also the refined intellectual, taste she developed in Italy, has given her a deeper cultural awareness. After fifteen years, she returned to The Netherlands, looking at the Dutch culture scene with fresh eyes.

The photographs of Elizabeth Koning are the result of intensive, old-fashioned labour. Her portraits of adults and children are still and sober, in a painterly setting. Her pictures are like an excursion through art history, sometimes chronological, sometimes leaping in time. Icons of our unconscious world, that carry a personal pictorial language. Her subjects seem very lifelike, because she uses the sfumato technique, but also because of the extreme realism with all the details of a genuine face with wrinkles and all. Sometimes they are almost like portraits from the Renaissance, reminiscent of Bellini, Rafael and Holbein, but at the same time painters like Co Westerik or Pyke Koch come to mind.

Elizabeth Koning paints with pixels: portraits of adults, adolescents and children. Her portraits are built slowly, layer after layer. Sometimes elements will remain unused until she has found the right composition. The end result is printed in the laboratory. This is the master print, which is pasted on to aluminium foil using a special procedure and given a high gloss finish.

For further information contact Artipico Art Gallery, tel +31 651 922 582 or contact Artipico Art Gallery by using the contact form.