Italian artist and jewellery designer Giorgio Vigna was born in Verona 1955.

Artist and designer

Vigna is an artist and designer. He makes jewellery, sculptures, body accessories and interior accessories that are predominantly functional. He designs jewellery for film, theatre and television and produces special collections for fashion designers. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, and extensively published in international magazines. Giorgio Vigna teaches, gives conferences and presides over workshops in Italy and abroad.

Starting in the world of theatre

Giorgio Vigna spent his formative years at art school. He started his working career in the theatre as costume designer, set designer and director.

He then worked in art publishing, where he learned and experimented with traditional marbling techniques, later applying them to porcelain, ceramic, paper, fabric, wood and glass. He experimented with engraving techniques in the workshop of the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome.

Sculptures to wear

At the same time he designed and created jewellery and sculpture to be worn as ornaments. He produced designs and costume jewellery for operas (among them Salomé and Don Carlos for Pier Luigi Pizzi), films (Belly of an Architect by Peter Greenaway, Stealing Beauty by Bernardo Bertolucci, Le fate ignoranti by Ferzan Ozpetek, Agata e la tempesta by Silvio Soldini, L‘odore del sangue by Mario Martone, Palermo Shooting by Wim Wenders) as well as theatre and television productions. He also created special jewellery collections for international fashion designers.

Interest in glass

He extended his interest into the world of glass. For Venini he created the Siderale vase, a very successful collection of single pieces called Fuochi d’acqua, the limited editions Fuochi d’argento and Fuochi iridati, the Sasso, Fonte and Stilla vases, the Talismani jewellery collection and the limited edition Fior d’acqua for the Millennium III collection. For the 85th Anniversary of Venini he created a light sculpture Luce Siderale.

He was artistic director of the first Venini project in gold and glass jewellery, for which he designed the Lapilli and Eliofora collections.

For Salviati Vigna has created a jewellery collection of unlimited pieces and as well a collection of unique    pieces of jewels.

In 1997 he was invited by the International Glass Research Center of Nuutajarvi, Finland, to organise a workshop on glass jewellery for the students of Hame Polytechnic, which he conducted in July 1998. It was in Nuutajärvi workshop where Vigna came into contact with the Finnish glass factory Iittala. This contact led over the years Vigna to design a collection of the renowed Iittala Birds in glass, the Vigna Collection, internationally launched in 2007.

In 2007 he also designed, using the ancient Murano glass working techniques, the perfume bottle of Colonia Murano Edition, for Acqua di Parma (LVMH group).

Powerful pieces with symbolic content

Giorgio Vigna’s artistic course winds around shapes and materials that add resonance to his power of imagination, using elements from nature that echo its most primal and primordial aspects. Giorgio Vigna operates on the borderline between real and imaginary worlds. His creations are filled with the fascination of objects that inhabit dreams – familiar, yet alien at the same time.

Giorgio Vigna uses his materials in a way that conforms with the intrinsic nature of the material, yet at the same time explores its limits to discover paradoxes and reveal hidden possibilities. The glass loses its familiar guise; it becomes a concrete expression of hypothetical worlds. The shapes are primal and elementary, too. His works are powerful and natural, universal and timeless, constantly full of symbolic content.

Vigna has continued his research in the field of jewellery and sculpture while developing his interest in design, producing sculptures that are often also objects for everyday use.

In 2005 he designed the silver objects Sassi and Calligramma for Gabriele De Vecchi.

Works in exhibitions and collections

Giorgio Vigna has exhibited in many international exhibitions, among them:

Solo exhibitions

Giorgio Vigna, Altre nature, Palazzo Fortuny

     Giorgio Vigna du bijou à la sculpture, Art&Rapy Contemporary Art Gallery, Monaco, Principality of Monaco

     GiorgioVigna  Jewels,  Designmuseo , Helsinki, Finland

Sasseto, Luigi Pecci Contemporary Art Museum, Prato, Italy

Nature di vetro, in collaboration with Venini, at the Museo Correr, Venice, Italy

Fuochid’acqua, in collaboration with Venini, Museo di Villa Pignatelli, Naples, Italy

Noctiluca, Stefania Miscetti Gallery, Rome, Italy

Giorgio Vigna, Naila de Monbrison Gallery, Paris, France

Group exhibitions

European Design  Since 1985, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis – Indiana, Usa

GLAS, Designhuis, Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Eternal Platinum the ultimate symbol of love, Triennale, Milan, Italy

Gioiello Italiano Contemporaneo, Museo di arti decorative Pietro Accorsi, Torino – Kunstgewerbermuseum, Berlin - Castello Sforzesco, Milan – Fiera di Vicenza, Palazzo Valmarana Braga, Vicenza

Glass Wear,  Museum of Art and Design – New York, Schmuckmuseum -  Pforzeim, Toledo Museum of

     Art  -Toledo, Glazen Huis -  Lommel, Belgie, Art Museum of South Texas  -Corpus Christi, Usa,  Memorial

     Art Gallery, University of Rochester – New York, Usa

     Detour, the Moleskine City Notebook Experience, The Art Directors Club – New York

Vetri. Nel mondo. Oggi, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Venice, Italy

Glassdressing, Cà Rezzonico Museum, Venice, Italy

Loot 2006, Museum of art and Design, New York, USA

Masterpieces/Capolavori, Palazzo Bricherasio, Torino, Italy

Arte da indossare, National Decorative Arts Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Contemporary Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s, London, England

The unexpected too, Sotheby’s, New York, USA

His works are in public and private collection such as:

The Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu Collection of  Murano Glass, New York, USA

Miaao, International Museum of Applied Art, Torino, Italy

MAD Museum of Art and Design, New York, USA