MUNICH.- Giampaolo Babetto (born 1947 in Padua) has had a marked influence on the avant-garde goldsmiths’ scene since the late 1960s. He is one of the protagonists of the so-called Padua School and has significantly moulded the image of art jewellery in Italy.

"Babetto’s works mirror a refined aesthetic concept based on dialogue, interrelationships and a blurring of boundaries between art genres," said Florian Hufnagl, Director of Die Neue Sammlung.

Babetto’s work reflects contemporary art movements such as concrete art, minimal art, kinetic or op art in a unique, purist and plastic manner. Made up of different abstract elements, broken down into modular units, or rendered moveable through the use of ingenious links, Babetto’s works have a tectonic character – like mini architectural pieces or mini sculptures.

As a jewellery artist who has received a number of awards, he prefers working in gold due to its stable malleability and its warm sheen which he combines with unconventional materials such as plastic or glass, dusting the surface with a velvet-like pigment in luminous reds or blues or using enamel and age-old niello-based techniques.

He has already been classified a mixed media artist, working not only on jewellery but also on silver objects, furniture design and architectural projects. His oeuvre reflects the uncompromising demands he places on his own handling of the various artistic disciplines, combined with a systematic approach and love of experimentation. With his expressive but nevertheless very wearable pieces, Babetto has become one of the most influential international jewellery artists.

Working in close cooperation, Giampaolo Babetto and Die Neue Sammlung have created an exhibition tailor-made to the circular, light-filled gallery space on the second floor of the rotunda in the Pinakothek der Moderne, whose unique architectural qualities are re-interpreted every year by a different artist from the international field of art jewellery with a display of his or her’s work.