Born in Mantua and brought up in Milan, Elisabetta Meneghello is currently living nearby Como.
Her humanistic background as well as her philosophical studies contribute to her speculative attitude. In spite of her commitment to her family-run firm, Elisabetta has never renounced her artistic inclination.
She has always focused on drawing. She has been attending painting courses at Galli Academy of Arts in Como since 2012, first under the guidance of Patrizia Cassina, then under the supervision of Pierantonio Verga. As she enrolled at the afore-mentioned academy she started exhibiting. Early this year, she had her own exhibition – under the title of Whatweleftbehind -  at the Coffee Art and Cigarettes Hegelhof in Vienna.
Drawing has always been the core of her outputs, even though – at present - she fancies painting more. Her drawings range from small sketches with poems to big pouncing drawing papers carried out with crayons, oil pastels  and charcoal, which are subsequently covered up with color.
The early paintings are acrylics either on drawing paper or on canvas. She prefers to start from light backdrops, sort of watercolors,  before spreading coats of colors.
Her main concern is the space as she conceives of it. The artist creates an interplay of volumes by means of  juxtaposed colorful masses. The latter seem at times to broaden and shrink as you perceive a divide between what stands above and what lies below. You can catch a glimpse of a horizon.
The overall construction is not an intellectual work. The brush gets smoother suggesting the coming to the fore of underground landscapes, all covered with yellow desert sands, grey and white icy slabs, and a stock of pink clouds. They are monochromes with some light at the centre coming out of the backdrop which reminds to another reality. Are these monochromes ghosts or living presences?
From the glazing Elisabetta shifted, in her subsequent works,  to a steady covering up. At first her touch was somehow random as  it was influenced by instinct and powerful feelings. Over the time, the covering has become more and more complete. Any chromatic attempt is now undermined by an overwhelming use of black which eventually swallows up everything. This may reveal too much about the artist.
From drawing to color. From the brush to the spatula. From a wide range of colors to black. And back.
The artist spreads layers of colors by using a spatula. She adds and subtracts at once. She opens and then she closes. She follows a wave-like movement. When everything seems to surrender to a pervasive black something happens, some kind of break or possibility. At times perfectly in control, like in the 2015 series Roads, at some other times dragged by chaos.
Order quits, only mystery remains, as you can see from the overwhelming black of her canvasses, which is only slightly broken by emerging signs – thin, capricious and unconnected scratches which are reminiscent of lyrical starry skies.

Elisabetta Mossinelli