Toscana & Chianti News
Beauty
Gold and denim for Rogai's women
Art and jewellery, beauty and luxury, gold and denim: the historical heart of Florence set the scene for an event devoted to these dichotomies, which witnessed two Italian hallmarks side by side for the first time.
On the one hand, the Florentine painter Elisabetta Rogai and, on the other hand, Stroili Oro.
At the end of June the Florentine artist — already known to the international public for her innovative "wine-made" paintings, which age on the canvas — did a live performance in the boutique in Via Calzaioli, "dressing" the women in her artworks with the earrings, bracelets and necklaces of the famous jewellery label.
The artistic soirée was restricted to a hundred or so guests including several well-known faces of the Florence jet set such as Councillor Titta Meucci, the President of the Municipal Council Eugenio Giani and wine producer Antonella D'Isanto (I Balzini) as well as sparking the curiosity of a multitude of tourists walking along the old city street. 
After all, it was a brand-new interpretation of contemporary art, a union between two sectors that symbolize beauty and femininity, a way of formulating and embellishing the same idea as painting, offering enthusiasts a new way of experiencing and sensing art.
On the other hand, the subjects of Elisabetta Rogai's performance were the paintings executed on denim canvases, the same material from which jeans are made.
Actually, we're talking about "recycled" jeans given that the paintings still display the stitching, which were once part of the jeans.
So these are original works made using an innovative technique, which makes the most of the special texture of denim, recovering canvases from used clothing, transformed into an exceptionally versatile medium.
Holes can even be made in them to introduce the jewellery of Stroili Oro into the canvas at the height of the subjects' bodies and faces: the effect is three-dimensional; it gives depth to the works and embellishes them with details strictly in gold and gems.
"I loved the idea," asserts the artist, "of being able to try my hand in a world like jewellery, to render my women even more real by adorning them not with painted accessories but 100% real ones."
If, with all likelihood, in the autumn Rogai's paintings prove to be the stars of a similar event in the Milan store of the jewellery label, the paintings on denim canvases by the Florentine artist will be displayed in September in Prato, in the L'Opificio space belonging to John Malkovich, awaiting other partnerships with famous denim fashion companies.
