ATHENS PRINTMAKING ART CENTER – PANDOLFINI & SIATERLI C.N.P.P. presents Onorio Bravi’s solo exhibition Τracce su carta (Traces on paper) at ETCH INK art space from October 10 until November 8, 2025.

The exhibition presents a significant body of works of the artist, including woodcuts and etchings created over the past five years. The themes of the works derive from a broader spectrum of themes that reside in his oeuvre, exploring the relationship between color and light, as well as the connection between the technique and manual practice of printmaking, the symbolic depth of the images, and the creation of psychological landscapes.

His experience thus fits into a historical lineage of artists for whom encountering non-Western cultures radically redefined their artistic perspectives. Bravi’s artistic lexicon is nourished by an ongoing dialogue with various traditions, which go beyond the formative experience in North Africa, with Mediterranean sensations that continue to manifest themselves in the density of light and color that characterizes his works and gives them a distinctive atmosphere.

His style is one that he was able to masterfully articulate in the various artistic disciplines in which he has been engaged, exhibiting a form of multidisciplinarity that has brought him to devote himself to painting also to engraving techniques, in particular woodcut, etching, and aquatint, moving with fluidity and with an approach that reveals his notable mastery and coherent vision

In Bravi’s work, drawing, engraving, and traced signs coexist and intertwine, shaping a unique artistic vocabulary. As art historian Davide Caroli notes in his text featured in the exhibition catalog, Bravi’s works engage in a powerful dialogue with the history of engraving in the wider Emilia Romagna region: “[…] The signs of this imaginative tradition are especially evident in Bravi’s etchings and aquatints which he continues to combine with his paintings and drawings: these are scenes whose magical quality is sometimes accentuated by the use of color – which is itself unusual in this type of technique – but which allows him to create atmospheres and impressions that are imbued with an almost dreamlike, visionary inspiration, as if born of a trance that allows a unique world—an archaic, primitive world—to reveal itself.  We find in these works signs that thus become the medium for the realization of dreams. These are dreams that lead to fantastical places, ones Bravi likes to call “places of the soul”[…]”

Bravi’s synthesis suggests an attempt to blend the harshness of social criticism with a deeper, perhaps empathetic or hopeful, human dimension, while it emerges as a powerful vehicle for social commentary: “Making reference to the most difficult moments in recent history, the artist establishes a continuity of human struggle, suggesting that art can serve as a timeless voice for justice. This elevates his social commentary beyond mere topicality, giving it genuinely lasting resonance”.

 

Artist bio 

Onorio Bravi was born in Forlì in 1955 and now lives and works in Ravenna. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti of Ravenna, studying painting. Starting in the 1980s, he is a longtime curator and set designer, having received numerous grants and awards. For the past twenty-five years, he has collaborated with the Antica Stamperia Pascucci 1826. His graphic works are held at the Repertorio degli Incisori Italiani del Gabinetto Stampe Antiche e Moderne “Le Cappuccine” of Bagnacavallo (RA) and at the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura. He was invited to the XXVIII edition of the Biennale del muro Dipinto in Dozza (BO). He has been invited to exhibit his work in several solo shows, one of the most important being at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Athens, in the context of the Tempo Forte project “Italia – Grecia 2019.” Another particularly significant time for his development was the period of time that he spent in Algeria in the first half of the 1980s, for the place’s specific influences and more broadly for the influences of the Mediterranean basin evident in his work. This period left a profound imprint on his art, especially in terms of its atmosphere. His works are held in public and private collections in Italy and abroad.

Website: www.onoriobravi.eu

Texts: Davide Caroli, Luca Maggio

With the financial support and under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens.

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ETCH INK art space

16 Argyroupoleos str., Lycabettus, 114 71, Athens, Greece

Opening: Friday 10 October, 18:30 – 22:30

Duration: 10 October – 8 November 2025

Opening days & hours:

Wednesday – Thursday – Friday 18.00 – 21.00 & Saturday 11.00 – 15.00

Info | [email protected] | www.athens-printmaking.com