Background

Born in 1965, in Mexico City, Mexico. Daughter of the Industrial Federico Riojas Rodriguez founder of CORO S.A (record and cassette company) and founder of the Club Safari Mexico (Hunter's Club) and Graciela Zuckermann Quintero. Grandaughter of the famous Mexican physician and surgeon Conrado Zuckermann Duarte, Minister of health and founder of the Institute of Cancerology in Mexico City, born in 1900 in Budapest, Hungary. Great-granddaughter of the well-known Mexican artist Carmela Duarte Garcia. Moved to Italy In 2006.

Education

Speaks 5 languages. Studied in Mexico City, Geneva, Chebres and Cologne.

Career

GRACIELA RIOJAS ZUCLERMANN - Architect, worked in Mexico from 1989 to 2006

Member of the "Colegio de Arquitectos de la Ciudad de México" since 1991. She worked with the architect Manuel Mestre. In 1990 – She worked at FONATUR (Mexican government institution for tourism) in Mexico City, where she was commissioned to design an urban project of a Real Estate Marina in Huatulco, Mexico. Which she then used for her Architectural degree Thesis: "Marina Inmobiliaria Coral en Bahia de Cacaluta, Huatulco. From 1991 to 1992 -She worked at Betancourt Architects. From 1991 to 2006 -She worked as an independent exterior and interior architect in Mexico City and Acapulco. Works in Mexico City: 2 restaurants, 1 (project and realization) and 1 only project. And 3 residential villas (design, construction and furnishings). Works in Acapulco: 2 residential villas (project, interior architecture and furnishings). 5 apartments (project, interior architecture and furnishings). 3 condominium Lobbies with swimming pool (project and realization). Advertising graphics and logos for various companies. In 2006 moved to live in Italy and had to leave the Architecture as her studies are not recognised in Europe.

CHELITA ZUCKERMANN - Artist from 2013 in Italy

In 2016 Chelita began her life as an Artist by transforming aluminum plates into sculptures. Her sculptures were very soon appreciated as , 2 of her sculptures were placed in public places, such as Porto Rotondo, Costa Smeralda, Italy. In 2019, 2 of her sculptures entered in 2 Museums, 1 at the Papalote Museum in Mexico City and the other in the Jewish Museum in Casale Monferrato, Italy. In 2019 Chelita won 3 first prizes, 1 at the 13th. Arte Laguna Prize in Venice and 2 in Palm Springs, USA. Her mirrored aluminum sculptures blend into the environment, taking the colors of nature as a reflection, moving with the wind and transmitting natural and artificial light. Chelita want's to bring joy and light with her artwork.

Achievements

• 

  1995 Selected by a jury of Mexican architects for the publication of her project of the villa "Casa Oseguera" in a book entitled "LA CASA EN LA ARQUITECTURA MEXICANA", by Comex.

Works

More photos

• Aloe Vera 2019

  • Aluminum sculpture 2019

    (Dimensions: H. 120 cm, D. 210 cm, W. 12 kg. It moves with...)

    2019

• Aluminum Mooving Sculpture 2016

  • Shiny Agave 2016-2019

    (Aluminum sculpture 2016. Dimensions: H. 125 cm, D. 210 cm...)

    2016

• Aluminum Mooving Sculpture 2019

  • Inner Light 2019

    (This sculpture will be made in stainless steel on twice i...)

    2019
  • Protective Light 2019

    (Aluminum Sculpture 2019 Dimensions: H. 100 cm, L. 60 cm, ...)

    2019
  • Catus Flower, Lotus Flower & Cempasuchil

    (Aluminum sculpture 2019. Dimensions: H. 70 cm, D. 90 cm, ...)

    2019

• Aluminum Mooving Sculpture 2020

  • Sitting Angel 2020

    (Aluminum Sculpture 2020 Dimensions: H. 100 cm, L. 60 cm, ...)

    2020

• Aluminum Sculpture 2017

  • Christmas flower

    (Aluminum sculpture 2017. Dimensions: H. 70 cm, D. 90 cm, ...)

    2017

• Aluminum Sculpture 2018

  • Galactic Peacock 2018

    (Aluminum sculpture 2018. Dimensions: H. 167 cm, L. 220 cm...)

    2018

• Aluminum Sculpture on canvas 2020

  • Freedom 2020

    (Aluminum sculpture on canvas. Dimensions: H. 150 cm, Dep...)

    2020

• Hanging aluminum mooving Sculpture 2018

  • Dragon fly "Evinrude" 2018

    (Aluminum sculpture 2018. Dimensions: H. 40 cm, L. 130 cm,...)

    2018

• Hanging aluminum Mooving Sculpture 2019

  • Bee "Pipiyoli" against insecticides 2019

    (Hanging aluminum Sculpture Dimensions: H. 70 cm, L. 155 c...)

    2019

• Hanging or standing aluminum Mooving Sculpture 2019

  • The Cricket "CHAPULIN" 2019

    (Aluminum sculpture 2019. Dimensions: H. 70 cm, L. 135 cm,...)

    2019

• Lotus Flower

  • Aluminum sculpture 2018

    (Dimensions: H. 70 cm, D. 90 cm, W. 4 kg. It moves with th...)

    2019

Membership

Member of the UNIKA Group of Artist from the Val Gardena, South Tyrol, Italy 2021

Member of the "Movimento degli Arcani" Group of Artist chosen by the famous Art Critic and Prof. Paolo Levi 2020

Member of the "Suedtiroler Kuenstler Bund", Group of Artist from South Tyrol, Italy 2020

Member of the "Associazione degli Artisti dell'Alto Adige" Group of Artist from Bolzano, Italy 2020

Member of the Association of Mexican Architects, Mexico 1991

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• THE SECRET SOUL OF A POETESS - Interview with Chelita Zuckermann by Prof. Paolo Levi
  
  The Italian and Mexican artist Chelita Zuckermann is a wise lady in combining the rigor of technique with the poetry of form. From the first visual approach, the attentive and sensitive observer is emotionally involved and urged to further explore the creative path of this extraordinary messenger of visual emotions. In turn, in order to better understand her creative personality, I carefully investigated the corpus of her works, and then I asked her specific questions about her research.
  
  - WhIch materials do you use?
  
  I work with sheets of colorless mirrored aluminum, colorless hammered mirror, and anodised aluminum in various colors. They are thin sheets - from 0.5 to 1 mm - because if they are thicker they cannot be folded by hand, and if I need greater thicknesses, I join two to four. I have always loved making objects with my hands and she has always fascinated me to go into hardware stores to see if I could find something to assemble or build. So, in 2016, I found these aluminum sheets which, due to their consistency, made me think of plants. I bought them together with some sheet metal scissors. Arriving home, I leafed through a book and decided to make agaves, which are typical plants of Mexico, where I was born and lived until 2006.
  
  - What mechanical means do you use?
  
  To cut aluminum I use a mechanical shear and sheet metal scissors. To bend I use rudimentary methods, as I use my hands and to make uniform curves I use PVC pipes of various diameters. To join the aluminum sheets I use a drill with which I drill the plates, which are then joined with bolts and nuts in stainless steel and / or galvanized and with colorless aluminum rivets and; I also use a compressor (for rivets), pliers, screwdrivers and clamps. Sometimes I use hinges .
  
  - How are your inspirations born?
  
  The ideas usually come to me overnight. I wake up and I already have in mind what I will do. If it is an insect, I study its shape, size and way of moving. I also do research on its function in nature, its symbolic meaning not only in history, but also in legends and in different cultures. Then I establish its size, and then I do all the calculations so that the work is harmonious and proportionate to reality. I proceed in the same way for all my other works, whether they are plants, animals or people.
  
  Talented author of visionary forms Chelita Zuckermann is an artist of solar reflections, opposing the melancholy of the shadow, revealing the expressive mutations of light, and trusting in the perceptive sensitivity of the observer. They are plastic messages full of sweetness, like the Girl with a balloon; sumptuous and polychrome, like the wonderful Butterfly; intense and spiritual like the Angel; immanent and wise like the Gymnast with the ribon.
  
  They are mirrors of executive intelligence, like Pegasus, a restless winged horse landed directly from Greek mythology on a landing out of time and history, but translated into an exquisitely contemporary language. Or a symphony of elements, where the mythical icon becomes shining flesh To deal with the plastic constructs of Chelita Zuckermann without cryptic intellectualism, it is necessary to grasp the reflection of a solar soul in the intermittent glows of the surfaces. The variables of the mirrored light convey the illusion of the completeness of the forms, where the voids creep in like musical pauses. Furthermore, the visual clarity - for example that of shining Agave and Cactus Flower - becomes dance under the breath of the open air, where the apparent fragility of aluminum highlights its narrative function, and where the shimmering reflections under the sun transfuse new meanings to the asepticity of matter. The communion with nature, insects, the human figure and angels with transparent wings, expresses the personality of an artist free from the conceptual stakes of the contemporary area. She grants full freedom to the flow of intuition, grasp it, memorize it through preparatory mental sketches; one notices her passion in dealing with and balancing the primary idea with the final construct, elevated to an effective symbol through arcane lights and precarious transparencies. Static and at the same time mobile presences, plausible and abstract at the same time, are the reflections of an executive act that announces the secret truths of a poet.

Connections

Married to Stefano Vanzo - Bolzano, Italy 2005 to present

Divorced from Alfonso Oseguera Iturbide - Mexico City 1991-2004

Father:

Federico Riojas Rodriguez

Mother:

Graciela Zuckermann Quintero

Daughter:

Andrea Oseguera Riojas

Son:

Joaquín Oseguera Riojas

Son:

Diego Oseguera Riojas

husband:

Stefano Vanzo Amstler

Brother:

Federico Riojas Zuckermann

Brother:

Eugenio

References

• ART CRITICISM by Paolo Levi 2019 ON THE WINGS OF A BUTTERFLY ON THE WINGS OF A BUTTERFLY It is not completely random, in my practice of interpreter of contemporary art, to review my convictions with respect to the expressive contexts that go beyond tradition. In the dictionary of the terms of use of today's art criticism - where the dictates and intentions of Conceptual Art prevail - words like emotion, harmony, message, expression, which instead remain for me significant, have almost completely disappeared. To explain myself better here I want to exemplify with Conceptual artists, who operate through facets that do not have the subject of Art, but philosophy, providing products with a varied aesthetic structure, such as the severe protagonists of "Poor Art". They usually make use of materials that are as poor as they are unusual, such as the torrent stones, wood or rusty iron plates. Thus a reversal between forms, materials and concepts is born, through aesthetic experimentation. In this context the aesthetic reference canons of the past are banned. In this sense I am inclined to consider the works of Chelita Riojas Zuckermann congenial to a collocation in the conceptual context, both from the point of view of the compositional construct and the typology of the material with which the artist performs her experimentation. Apparently her way of proceeding is suited to the professional formula of the artisan, skilled and wise in cutting, in this context, the aluminum foil, traditionally used for industrial purposes; with great talent she enhances the material, malleable in the cut, in shapes suitable for a plastic figuration, ideally imagined as an assembly of single pieces, and born from intuition and creative emotion. But her way of proceeding differs and evolves with respect to that of the aesthetic operators of Poor Art, since she uses the force of Poetry which becomes an immediate and tangible essence. Chelita Riojas Zuckermann is a visionary artist, messenger of emotions and spiritual harmony. Her main subject is the territory of Nature, where a butterfly rises to the sky, whose wings in mirrored aluminum in the colors of gold and silver seduce with the coincidences of the reflections of light. I am unaware of other compositions of similar quality and workmanship, that is of a factually heavy construct but, at the sight, of diaphanous lightness, and I am surprised by the floral compositions of a disarming, yet apparent, simplicity of execution. Aluminum is therefore here a meditated expressive instrument designed to reflect the chromatic magnificence of mother nature; magical mirror that reveals symphonies of shapes and colors; joyful messenger of the presence of the wind and of the plants when, outdoors, catches its light and motion; and finally, under artificial light, witness of the metaphysical silence of the night and narrator of the seasons of life on the wings of a butterfly. Paolo Levi
  2019
• LETTER AND POETRY ON THE ANGELS by Paolo Levi 2019 Dear Chelita,       My answer is affirmative to the question whether your aluminum works have the sweet and mysterious transparency of mother nature; they are precious dedications to crickets, bees, butterflies. But the moment you introduce the presence of the Angels into the repertoire, the scenic territory changes in essence. In this regard, here I want to quote a few lines of Harold Bloom, a literary critic who has just passed away, taken from his precious essay Anatomy of Influence, which seem to be addressed to the verses that I have dedicated to you: “Making criticism in the true sense of the term is equivalent to thinking in poetic way to poetic thought ". That is to say that if you used the usual prose, your poetic creatures would remain in a state of permanent mutism, in an anonymous static condition. And the observer would be completely lacking in revelations about their spiritual watermark. Dressing the Archangel of your knowledge, opening yourself to the white wings of the wind, between the immanent bars of the uncertain, you will see the chance of existence. Loving match in the mirror, swirl of man's maturity, while the angel will doze off in amazement, you will leaf through the chastity of the score. Listen to the violin concert, observing the viola del breath. the angel will fulfill your destiny, telling you the heavenly chronicles of cherubs of modest feathers, dedicated at dawn to tune lyres, soft airs of cloud of comfort, in the infinite change of the Garden. Morning singing rhapsody magic flute along the flower beds, sighs the canary angel. The sky is born of a thousand blues, where the harp threads play. Paolo Levi
  2020