Stefano Marchetti

As much an alchemist as a jeweller, Stefano Marchetti has always loved metal, fire, chemistry, computers. He creates an archaic visual language of precious, ruptured fragments handled with a painterly sensitivity to colour and form. ‘Materials, metals in particular,’ he says, ‘with their potential to hold and transmit meaning, occupy the centre of my research‘. Unafraid to challenge his passion for jewellery and the experience of making, in his material explorations he finds both beauty and nightmares. It is not the material that creates the result, he says, but our ability to fertilise it with ideas.

Born in Italy in 1970, Stefano was a student of Francesco Pavan at the Istituto Statale d’Arte Pietro Selvatico in Padua and also studied sculpture at the Accademia di belle Arti in Venice. He has won numerous awards, including the Marzee Prize in 2010 and the Herbert Hofmann Prize at Schmuck in 2016. His work is exhibited internationally and held in collections, including the Marzee Collection, CODA Museum Apeldoorn, Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Dallas Museum of Art in Texas, Museum of Art & Design in New York, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art in the UK and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.