Lize Bartelli is a figurative painter whose practice examines the female experience and the social and cultural structures that shape it. Taking her own experience as a point of departure, she expands personal enquiry into broader questions around femininity, its codes, expectations and representations.

Working within the figurative tradition, Bartelli approaches painting as a colourist. Colour is not used simply to describe or represent the body, but to construct contrast, form, atmosphere and emotional tension. Through an ongoing investigation of colour and colour theory, she develops nuanced and often restricted palettes that shape the psychological register of each painting. Cropping, unusual viewpoints and the relationship between figure and ground further extend this use of contrast, giving the works a cinematic quality and suggesting narratives that continue beyond the frame.

Research is central to Bartelli’s practice. Each body of work develops through conceptual enquiry, writing and extensive visual research, drawing from photography, cinema, art history, popular culture and an evolving archive of found and digital imagery. This research is gathered into moodboards, where relationships between images begin to emerge and develop. Images may be used as found or reworked through cropping, colour, filtering, collage and other forms of digital manipulation. Bartelli uses both conventional and generative image-making tools to develop, test and visualise modifications within compositions. Through this process of selection, association and transformation, she constructs the photographic sources from which her paintings emerge.

Through the interplay of figuration, colour and constructed imagery, Bartelli explores how images of women acquire meaning, and the shifting relationship between female presence and the perceptions projected onto it.

“They are subversive and magnetic; they have frankness and a punk attitude.”

— Marisa Bellani, Curator

BIOGRAPHY

Lize Bartelli (b. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; lives and works in London) is a painter whose practice is rooted in colour theory and an exploration of feminine identity. Her visual language draws from her academic background in Philosophy at PUC-Rio (2008–2012) and Performance Art at CAL, Rio de Janeiro. She later studied Design at Istituto Marangoni in Milan (2012–2013) and Art History at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London (2016–2017). Bartelli committed to painting professionally in 2020.

Her work has been featured in Veja São Paulo by Humberto Addo (2022), Architectural Digest by Kathryn Romeyn (2020), Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine by Daniel Lichterwald (2020), Elle Decor (2020), FAD Magazine by Lee Sherrock (2025), Forbes Brasil by Paula Bezerra de Mello (2025), Vogue Brasil (2025), Hube Magazine (2026), and Artnet (2026).

Recent solo exhibitions include The Hour of the Star, Pipeline Contemporary, London (2026), curated by Marisa Bellani; Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, Roman Road, London (2025), curated by Marisa Bellani; Skeleton’s Closet, Simões de Assis, São Paulo (2022), curated by Julia Lima. Group show Mothering, Kupfer Project, London (2022), curated by Penelope Kupfer. She has also participated in international art fairs such as SP–Arte, São Paulo (2022), and Zonamaco, Mexico City (2024).