Stefano Bombardieri is an artist born in Brescia in 1968 who lives and works between Italy and numerous international contexts, including France, Switzerland, Germany, England, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.
The son of sculptor Remo Bombardieri, he was initially trained in his father’s workshop, where he came into contact with figurative sculpture and with the legacy of the great Masters of the twentieth century, in particular Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla. This early phase, connected to the experimentation with materials and traditional techniques, represents the starting point of a research that over time has opened up to an increasingly conceptual and philosophical dimension.
Over the years, the artist has developed a personal language, which he himself defines as minimal and conceptual, leading him to investigate central themes such as time and its perception, human existence, and the experience of pain in Western culture. His work is populated by monumental animals—rhinoceroses, elephants, whales, crocodiles—which, while maintaining a strong visual impact, go beyond realism to enter a surreal and symbolic territory. In these suspended figures, meticulously crafted in every detail, the artist constructs a universe in which human fragility and the instability of the present are translated into powerful and unsettling images.
From the 1990s onward, Bombardieri has worked between Italy and abroad, exhibiting in galleries and public spaces and creating large-scale urban installations that have contributed to making him internationally known. Among the most significant are those in Ferrara, Faenza, Bologna, Saint-Tropez, and Potsdam, where his sculptures engage in a direct dialogue with the landscape and architecture, transforming public space into a place of reflection and temporal suspension.
His career has been marked by important institutional participations: in 2007 he took part in the 52nd Venice Biennale and in 2011 in its 54th edition. In 2008 he created a permanent installation on the wall of the Portofino Park, while in 2009 the exhibition The Animals Countdown transformed Pietrasanta into a true open-air theater populated by his monumental creatures. In 2013 he joined the group The Italian Wave, with which he exhibited in Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Lithuania, further expanding the international scope of his work.
In more recent years, his research has continued to be presented in major museum contexts and international exhibitions. In April 2021, the Erarta Museum in Saint Petersburg hosted his first solo exhibition in Russia, The Boy and the Elephant, and in the same year he took part in the eighth edition of the Bad Ragaz Sculpture Triennial in Switzerland. Also in 2021, the volume Stefano Bombardieri – Sospeso. Works / Anachrological Collection was published, bringing together and retracing the artist’s entire career from his beginnings to his most recent works.
His numerous solo exhibitions, held in Italy and abroad, testify to the evolution of a coherent and recognizable body of work, capable of combining visual power with conceptual depth. At the same time, Bombardieri has taken part in a wide range of group exhibitions, engaging with other leading figures of the contemporary scene in museums, foundations, and public spaces. His works are now part of important collections in Italy and abroad, confirming the central role his work occupies in the landscape of contemporary sculpture.