Never has it happened before: in the whole history of art, no one has ever produced a 360-degree etching. This masterly, grandiose panoramic view of Rome (530x56 cm) is the work of Niké Borghese.
The panorama is simultaneously poetic and realistic, synthetic and analytical, but above all, fascinating: so fascinating that it deserves a distinctive place among the most eminent Italian landscape artists, from Canaletto to Guardi for painting and to Piranesi for Etchings of Rome.Like Giambattista Piranesi, Niké Borghese is not Roman: she was born at Nice, France. A diplomat’s daughter, she spent many years in Australia, England, France and Asia before finally settling in the heart of Rome, at Palazzo Borghese, with a twofold anchor, her marriage and her art.
Against the stream. To express her artistic vocation, Niké Borghese has chosen a particularly arduous medium, and a rather unusual one for a woman: etchings and aquatints, involving a particularly hard and reflective commitment.It is much easier to work with an easel than with metal sheets, with a brush rather than an etching needle, with oils and watercolours rather than nitric acid or iron perchloride (but it should also be noted that, in parallel with her engravings, Niké Borghese is also a delightful and tormenting painter in oils).
Her Roman etchings. Her (heartfelt) Rome-inspired etchings and aquatints form a peculiar trend in this artist’s vast production and should really be considered an essential part of the masterly range of cityscapes whose subject is the Eternal City.
An unmistakable, extremely pure style. Perfect perspective. Punctilious optics, at the same time unrelated to any illustrious graphic forerunner, with regard both to the size and vivacious naturalness of any human portrayal.
Detachment and participation: two souls, the eternal and the ephemeral, living together and completing each other, in these enchanting engravings of which Rome is the protagonist. The breath of thousands of years of history, plus the fleeting characters of passing time. As Angelo della Torre says, here is an artist that ranks “among the great interpreters of the Roman spirit”.
Not only Rome. Niké Borghese already has to her credit about thirty one-man-shows on three continents, and her reputation certainly makes her a worthy vestal artist of the Eternal City. But her fervid activity does not hinge only on Rome and on the art of engraving.
Her identity is also strong and unmistakable in her oil paintings. Her palette is impartially enriched with mythical culture, compositional precision, and great conceptual originality. The common denominator is an oneiric harmony, with an ear oft tending to the arcane language of Water.Thus we see the Torre della Signoria enigmatically looking at its reflection on the wet cobblestones; or the rapt Narcissus looking at his reflection in the River Cefiso; or the sweet Arethusa portrayed in the middle of a melodious liquid vortex; or the ancient broken bridge over the stream of the mythical town of Ninfa. There are not many great figurative artists in Italy, but the versatile and cultured Niké Borghese must certainly be numbered among them.
