Growing up on a small farm in northern Italy, Rosanna Gaddoni learned from childhood to read the world through the creatures that inhabit it. This sensitivity is today the heart of an artistic practice celebrated across Europe, the United States and Japan, and the invisible principle that pervades every portrait she makes — whether of animals, human beings or landscapes. In each one, Gaddoni seeks the soul of her subject: “I feel, deep within me, that everything is connected, that every creature manifests a different quality of the same Life.”
What happens, then, when her gaze turns to cats? This digital exhibition reveals it through a selection of drawings that bear witness to a profound and silent dialogue between the artist and the feline essence.
Rosanna Gaddoni works primarily with charcoal and graphite: essential, deliberately humble tools that allow her to strip away colour and focus on what lies beneath. A choice shaped, among other things, by the monochromatic vision of Henri Cartier-Bresson — the purity and poetry of black and white as a way of reaching what truly matters. What Gaddoni calls “Poetic Realism” is not merely faithfulness to detail, but the ability to reach what inhabits form, the soul of things. In her portraits, every stroke is an act of listening.
“There is a thread that connects all my works: they are points in a larger picture of devotion and respect for every form of Life, and for the immense privilege of perceiving the human journey in this remote corner of the universe we share.”
For Gaddoni, every subject is also a symbol: a presence embodying a different quality of existence, much as in the great mythologies of antiquity, where animals and forces of nature were expressions of deep psychological principles. She works with shadows and darkness because, as she says, they “hold surprises and truths” — and it is precisely in that space that her drawings reveal their full depth. This is what The Familiar Stranger shows, her most recent work, included in this exhibition: Bino, her cat, standing still as he stares at his own shadow. A real moment, observed with care, that becomes a reflection on what remains in the dark within ourselves — that part we don’t know well, but that surfaces every now and then.
Gaddoni’s cats inhabit space with natural grace, like guardians of a quiet wisdom. For her they are “messengers of regality, dignity and mystery” — embodiments of a secret grace, of that precise economy of energy that makes them, in every sense, Zen Masters. This sensitivity is rooted in her training in Sumi-e, the Japanese ink painting tradition, and in the Eastern philosophies she encountered during years of travel and life in Asia: traditions that seek not the perfection of detail, but the essential gesture, the moment when form carries something greater than itself.
Cats in Charcoal is an invitation to follow that thread: to see, through charcoal and graphite, not only the cats — but everything that, in them, speaks to us of ourselves, and of the extraordinary privilege of sharing this remote corner of the universe.
Bio
Rosanna Gaddoni is an Italian artist based in the Netherlands. After a corporate career, she took art courses at the Tekenschool of the Rijksmuseum and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, alongside private ateliers. She also trained in Sumi-e, the Japanese ink brush technique, completing a two-year course in Leiden and exhibiting her ink paintings at The National Art Center in Tokyo in 2019 and 2021.
Gaddoni’s work has received international recognition and numerous awards. In the 17th Art Renewal Center Salon, she won the 33PA Publishing Award and an Honorable Mention in the Drawing Category, following finalist placements in Drawing and Animals in the 16th edition. She has earned multiple accolades in the PleinAir Salon International Art Competition, including 3rd place overall, ten Category Awards, and eleven Honorable Mentions. The Portrait Society of America has also recognized her achievements with placements in 2nd, 6th, and 7th place, as well as several finalist awards from 2021 to 2024.
Her work has been exhibited at major institutions, including the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (2024), the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition (2022), and as a finalist in the Wildlife Artist of the Year (2023). In 2024 she received the Sheng Xinyu Art Award at the Almenara Art Prize, following an Honorable Mention in 2023, with exhibitions at the Circulo de la Amistad in Córdoba, Spain. She has also been awarded in the BoldBrush International Painting Contest and published in The Best of Drawing, Fine Art Connoisseur, Beautiful Bizarre, Plein Air, and Artists & Illustrators. Her recent exhibitions include the 64th Annual Art and the Animal with the Society of Animal Artists, and the 65th Annual Exhibition at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho (2025–26). She is a Signature Member of the Society of Animal Artists, an Elected Member of the Allied Artists of America, an International Member of the Portrait Society of America, and a member of Meesters van het Realisme.
Instagram: @rosannagaddoni
Digital Gallery
Discover Rosanna Gaddoni’s cats in charcoal and graphite.
