Statement
My absorption with collage using torn posters from the streets of Rome evolved to the way I paint and how I observe the world. Rome itself is a visual field of fragments bridging time and space, challenging visual immediacy, requiring the eye to jump and never quite land. I came to trust the connectedness of this incongruity. I work in my studio in Berkeley, California, for part of the year, and on the floor under a window in the Piazza San Cosimato in Rome for another part.
— JoAnn Ugolini, March 2026, Rome
BIO:
JoAnn Ugolini (b. 1945, Illinois) attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1970s and currently lives and works in Berkeley, CA and Rome, Italy. Her visual language is rooted in both locations, which she’s translated into an excavation of time and place. She’s reconfigured paint and line into enigmatic graffiti with the quiet intimacy of meditation in search of the harmony of abstraction. Through the media of painting and collage, she is seeking to create a kind of order out of the chaos and conflict of everyday life.
In 2026, she exhibited in Tiburon, California, and the 2026 Great Lakes Drawing Biennial at Eastern Michigan University. In 2025, she was included in an international group show, New Drawings, at the Kentler International Drawing Space in New York. Her work was also represented in The DeYoung Open, 2023, in San Francisco, CA., a showcase of Bay Area artists. In 2024, she had a solo show at Eric Rose in Berkeley that included paintings and collages over a period of 20 years. From 1984 to 2018, she was represented and had numerous solo shows at Barbara Anderson Gallery in Berkeley. She was also a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.
CV:
Exhibitions:
Solo and Two-Person
Between Places, Eric Rose, Berkeley, CA, May-June 2024
LOOK up, Gallery 621, Benicia, CA, 2024
The Edge and Over, Gallery 621, Benicia, CA, 2023
My Life as a White Person, Barbara Anderson Gallery, 2018
In Piazza, New Work, Barbara Anderson Gallery, Berkeley, CA, 2012
S E C O N D Language, Constructions in Collaboration, American Academy in Rome exhibit, 2009
Recent Work from the Walls of Rome, Barbara Anderson Gallery, 2008
Nel Paese dei Sogni, collage paintings on paper, Barbara Anderson Gallery, 2000
Dipinti e Disegni, Pratt Institute, drawings and paintings, Rome, Italy, 1999
Faces and Abstractions, collage paintings on paper, Barbara Anderson Gallery, 1997
I Venti/The Winds, paintings/collage on Roman posters, Barbara Anderson Gallery, 1993
Ecco il Momento, paintings/collage on Roman posters, Barbara Anderson Gallery, 1992
Paintings on Paper, Barbara Anderson Gallery, Berkeley, CA, 1984
Selected Group
New Drawings, Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, 2025
The DeYoung Open 2023, San Francisco, CA, Nov 2023–Jan 2024
Now More Than Ever, Pratt Institute, Rome, Italy, 2004
Artists’ Miniatures, small paintings on paper, Graystone Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2003
Cauldron & Net 2002, Claire Dinsmore, editor, volume 4
Rome Series 2002, paintings and works on paper, Studio di Architectura e Design, 2002
Chicago Art Expo, Chicago, IL, 1987
Monoprints, Chine Collé, Magnolia Editions Gallery, Oakland, CA, 1986
Experimental Printmaking, San Francisco Cameraworks, continuous-tone prints, CA, 1984
World Print Council, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA, 1982
Women Writers and Artists – Broadsides, Stanford University, CA, 1981