Fabio Bonini - Salt Sleep

Artist: Fabio Bonini (1965, Italy) – contemporary Italian painter

Title: Salt Sleep
Year: 2026

Technique
Oil on heavy cardboard prepared with shellac.
The cardboard is sealed with several coats of shellac, which stiffen it and create a surface that is slightly glossy and durable, on which the oil layers and drips remain very well defined.

Dimensions:
70 × 50 cm (height × width), without frame.

Company
Signed and dated on the back by the artist.

Edition
A single work, not part of an edition.

Origin:
– artist's studio, Parma (Italy).
Direct sale by the author.

Documentation:
– Certificate of authenticity issued and signed by the artist, including title, year, technique and dimensions.

Description of the work
Salt Sleep shows a frontal female figure, immersed in a dark blue-gray background. The face is slightly lifted, in a posture between abandonment and defiance, while the body is built with a limited range of whites, earth tones, and pale greens. The material is thick, cracked, almost mineral: the skin seems closer to salt or stone than to a smooth body.

Drips and colored bubbles produced by the shellac preparation leave the surface irregular and alive, making the contours emerge and disappear. The whole is dry and silent, an image that does not lean toward eroticism but toward a cold, almost iconic presence.

Conditions:
Work in excellent condition, new, never framed nor exhibited outside the studio. No restoration. Any slight irregularities, craquelure, or differences in gloss are due to the technique (thick oil on shellacked cardboard) and constitute an integral part of the work.

Shipping
The artwork will be shipped rolled up in a sturdy cardboard tube, well packaged and protected with appropriate materials, with tracked shipping. Frame not included.

Artist biography
Fabio Bonini (born 1965, Italy) is a figurative-expressionist painter. He graduated with a Master of Art diploma from the P. Toschi Art Institute in Parma.
He has spent many years working in restoration and the antiques sector, focusing on the conservation of churches and historic buildings: this has given rise to his attention to materials, surfaces, and traces of time.
The artist works predominantly in oil on shellac-prepared cardboard, with a physical painting made of thick layers, drips, and controlled accidents. Recent works use the female body as a field of tension between form and dissolution, avoiding an illustrative or narrative approach.