Heroes: Women Artists Who Influence and Inspire

SERENA BOCCHINO is an American artist who began exhibiting her work in 1986 in the East Village, New York. In 1987, Bocchino was awarded a studio residency at MoMA PS1, during which the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, Gianni De Michelis, invited Bocchino to have her first international solo exhibition in Rome, Italy. For the next several years, Bocchino received recognition from many art institutions that awarded her fellowships in both painting and drawing, including the Pollock Krasner Foundation, Artists Space, the Basil H. Alkazzi Foundation, Art Matters and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her subsequent domestic and international exhibitions were well received with reviews in the New York Times, Village Voice, ARTnews, Art in America and The New Yorker. Five films have been created about Bocchino’s work and process so far. Her first monograph, Serena Bocchino the Artist, was released in 2015.

Bocchino’s work focuses on the interpretation of music and movement in two- and three-dimensional forms. Bocchino has developed a unique pour method where she “draws” with paint poured from crushed cans and drizzled from sticks and paintbrushes. She combines gestural charcoal and graphite marks with stained paint areas to investigate the intersection of abstraction and expressionism. Additionally, Bocchino’s three-dimensional work includes sculpture utilizing wire, enamel paint, acrylic and often wood to transcribe the paintings into multi-dimensional forms, which are often described as “drawings in space.”

In 1982, Bocchino received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she studied with the renowned, Polish colorist, Wojciech Fangor. As an undergraduate student, she studied abroad at Wroxton College in Oxfordshire, England. That same year, Bocchino cultivated her practice while touring Russia’s famous art collections in cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Suzdal and Vladimir. Bocchino received her Master of Arts degree from New York University in 1985.

Bocchino’s work is represented in the collections of domestic and international museums, including: the Art in Embassies Program (Washington, D.C.), the Brodsky Center (New Jersey), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York), the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum (Beijing, China), Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (South Korea), Islip Art Museum (New York), the Lotus Art Museum (Beijing, China), Montclair Art Museum (New Jersey), Museo Italo Americano (California), National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan ́sku) (Poland), the Newark Art Museum (New Jersey), Nicolaysen Art Museum (Wyoming), Springfield Museum of Art (Ohio), St. Louis Art Museum (Missouri), Trenton State Museum (New Jersey), and the Zimmerli Art Museum (New Jersey), as well as many distinguished private and corporate collections.