Along awaited exhibition of Michele Bonelli’s “Times Square” series of paintings art-loving public the chance to appreciate her most mature work. Her paintings are mostly abstract, inspired, as she says, “by the essence of Times Square” and will be on view at the Taller Boricua Gallery, 121 East 106th Street from April 9-May 30, 2025.
With many of her other series— “Malibu,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and more recently, “Urban Abstracts”—Bonelli evokes the familiar without resorting to
any type of narrative or specific representation. Her series “Urban Abstracts” was inspired by the panorama of Long Island City where she works in a large, sunny studio. “Landscape is often overlooked,” she says, adding that her goal is to “bring a new and unique understanding and appreciation of urban architecture to the viewer.”
Bonelli brings that same vision to her paintings of Times Square. Everything is there on the canvas—the signs, the shapes, the vitality, the aggression, and buildings converging on each other. Study her latest series and you experience not just the turmoil but the flashy elegance of the epicenter of New York City. An essential motivation for the series came from photographing Times Square. She spent two days shooting about 700 photographs. She made a series of sketches, fine lines echoing the turmoil she captured on film, and then painstakingly mixing oil paints to create the exact tints and colors she wanted.
Bonelli likes working in the square. Her sketches range from 4.5″ x 4.5″ to 10″ x 10.” but mostly 20″ x 20.” The final sketches are so beautiful, they appear to be finished work. Using a series of complex procedures she transfers her sketches to huge canvases leaving no space unfilled—not unlike the crowded streets of Times Square. Her abstract forms evoke its turmoil, energy, and dynamism. Each painting is a knockout—a taut conglomeration with mere suggestions of billboard signs, arcs, circles, straight lines and curves.
The new series is “Jazzy,” she says. Like the jazz greats Bonelli likes to listen to, everything in her paintings is upended and unpredictable. Her shapes, circles, and squares flit in and out of the canvas. Not surprisingly, you can hang her cavasses anyway you wish. There is no top or bottom. How they are placed on the wall is totally arbitrary.
New York-raised and educated with several degrees including a Masters in fine art, Bonelli was passionate about painting from an early age. She traveled extensively, always seeking art galleries and museums, especially those that exhibited Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Piet Mondrian. Her work, like theirs, is fundamentally Cubist, always emphasizing the flatness of the canvas by breaking forms and objects into geometric shapes.
Inspired by Cubism, Bonelli break downs forms and objects into their basic components using abstract colors and verticals to bring about the pulsing vitality of Times Square. Bonelli formerly worked in the travel industry, but always painted in her free time. In 1993, after a succesful business career, she decided to devote herself exclusively to art work, some sculpture, print making, but mostly large-scale oil paintings.
In her latest series “Times Square,” you see pure abstract forms strongly suggesting as she says, “the existence of the real in the abstract space.” G&S
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