BIOGRAPHY
"Tompit, eclectic artist"
biography by Robert Colonna d'Istria
 |
Tompit paints with her bare hands. Like the alpinist going for the top, who strokes the rock with his skin, she makes body contact with her canvas. Rapture starts and joy is born. It’s a matter of love.
Tompit paints with her bare hands. She plunges her arms in the thick and vibrantly coloured matter, kneads it, soaks it up, spreads it and makes it explode on her canvas. Thrusts, strokes, exhilaration.
With her bare hands, Tompit paints as she loves, with infinite generosity, sensually, passionately and outright.
With grace. Simply.
She paints as you pick up flowers, as you bite into a piece of fruit as you must bite into life to taste its flavour.
She paints to share her doubts, fears and desires. Bare hand, humbly.
She paints to share her emotions, to fight loneliness.
Sharing is living. Tompit embraces life.
Her paintings are both troubled and sunny, filled with energy yet tormented, both calm and violent.
Like hope, like joy.
Paintings of light and life.
"WHAT STRIKES ME MOST IN LIFE IS BEAUTY, SIMPLICITY. A GESTURE, A PARTICULAR SITUATION, THAT'S POETRY."
It is said, we are told, she tells us, (and photographs are there to prove it - , a few works have survived), that she had her first exhibition when she was twelve. “ I do remember that exhibition, Tompit assures us, it was in Rome where I was born and bred.
Since then Tompit has never stopped creating: drawings, paintings, illustrations, work for the press and exhibitions all over the world.
After finishing high school in Italy, she enrols at the Parsons School of Design in New York where she graduates with a Bachelor in Fine Arts, majoring in Illustration and Design.
She then settles down in Paris. For many years she will work with the press. Her illustrations are mainly published by Le Nouvel Observateur, Télérama, Air France-Madame, Le Monde, Playboy and Marie-France. It is one of her works which will make the front cover of Le Nouvel Observateur to illustrate the bomb attacks of the 11th of September 2001.
Her services are also requested by the Fashion Industry(Christian Dior), in advertising (Tompit participates in publicity campaigns for Badoit), she also collaborates with Paris City Council illustrating some of their brochures.
It is in Paris that Francesca Squillante Montoro becomes Tompit. She created this pseudonym with the first syllables of her children’s names, Tommaso and Pietro, “my wings” as their mother refers to them.
"I THINK THAT THE ENERGY IN MY LIFE COMES FROM EXPERIENCING INTENSE SENSATIONS."
Press drawings are but one of many aspects of Francesca’s art work. In parallel to her collaboration with some of the biggest French newspapers and magazines, she develops her work in two new directions.
At the beginning of 2000, Epson invites her to use a new medium of expression: Digital Art. With this new technique, the artist does not need to use pencils and paint brushes anymore but needs a computer mouse instead. Her creations to publicise Epson can be viewed on www.digigraphie.com.
On Knoll International’s request, she puts together a one-day exhibition by printing her digital art on pieces of furniture designed by some of the greatest contemporary creators. Instead of Art on paper, Tompit invents Art on furniture, a world premiere! In Paris The Art Magazine nicknames Tompit: “La femme à la souris” (woman with mouse) and describes her as being no less than “The digital artist of the third millennium.”
Her work takes a new turn as Tompit changes matter, manner and style: if her drawings and digital art work remain figurative, her works of acrylic on canvas are resolutely abstract. If her press drawings had a message, her paintings transmit emotions. Gushing colours appear on canvas, explode, collude and create works of Art immediately acclaimed by critics and as her series “Tauromachie” demonstrates, valued by some of the greatest collectors.
Various branches of the Italian bank Monte Dei Paschi host her works which are also regularly exhibited and promoted by the Art Gallery Vintage (8 rue de Saint-Pères 75007 Paris, tel (0)1 42 96 27 47).
"MY WORK ALLOWS ME TO FEEL LESS LONELY, WHAT I CREATE TALKS TO ME."
Painting is only one aspect of Tompit’s personality. For the past fifteen years, she expresses herself through interior design.
In her eyes, it is a way to express her creativity and imagination and as for her drawings and paintings, it is also a way to leave a sign on her times through her sensitivity as an artist. The interior design projects that she has completed express her inimitable style: luminous and clear.
Tompit has in her possession a vast gallery/apartment in Paris which she has kept entirely white in order for some of her works of art to stand out, a bright chalet in Val d’Isère and a “see-through” house in Biarritz...She does not act as a simple decorator but as a true creator of spaces, as a scenographer who exposes her vision of the rest of world to others. She behaves as the film-maker of her own life as well as others’, as a true artist would.
Her works have been widely photographed by Jean-François Jaussaud in particular, and published in the most renowned European and American Interior Design magazines.
BEYOND THE BORDERS OF ART AND GEOGRAPHY
How best to describe the many talents of this generous artist, always innovative and imaginative is difficult. Drawings, paintings and interior design, the various aspects of her work are inseparable. You think she is here but she is there. You imagine her paint, she creates a set, you think she is in her studio but she has gone travelling to the end of the world to collect new impressions. It is difficult to capture Tompit…
Her work mirrors her life spent between Rome, Paris, Biarritz and as often as possible, work and time allowing, faraway and sunny lands.
Thank the Artist!