Cristina Smeraldi was born in Bologna, graduated in Law, passed the State  exam to practice as a lawyer at the Court of Appeal of Bologna, and is currently a Ph.D. research student in administrative law.

Alongside her legal career, she cultivates her artistic research, having always felt a deep inclination toward the world of art, particularly informal and material art. Her artistic sensibility leads her to experiment with the expressive spontaneity of color, brushstroke, and matter so that the painting, freeing itself from a purely figurative function, can communicate its own emotional message. In fact, over time the painting has detached itself from any figurative function, eventually becoming today, on the contrary, the origin of a vision to be represented that would otherwise not exist.

"The image must be destroyed so that the painting can have a life of its own to communicate. I simply try to let it emerge."

She is featured in prestigious publications, such as the Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea (Atlas of Contemporary Art), Giunti Editore, 2024 edition, presented in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and in Rome at the Capitulary Hall of the Senate of the Italian Republic; and the Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea, De Agostini, 2021 edition, a volume featured in the Book Pavilion during the Venice Biennale of Art.

In 2026, she participates in the Expo Bologna exhibition organized by the Wikiarte Gallery as part of the Artcity - Arte Fiera Bologna event, and exhibits her solo show Orizzoni Materici e Armoniche dell’incontro (Material Horizons and Harmonies of the Encounter) under the patronage of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Bologna (Porto Saragozza District), the Rotary Club Bologna Ovest G. Marconi, and the Università degli Studi G. Marconi at the Wikiarte Gallery in the historic center of Bologna.

In 2022, she participates in the Bienal De Arte Barcelona, International Art Exhibition, at the M.E.A.M. (European Museum of Modern Art), receiving the City of Barcelona Award, and exhibits at ArtePadova, the Modern and Contemporary Art Fair. She also exhibited at the Salento Biennale in 2020, hosted at the Ecomuseum of Lecce Stone.

Since 2019, she has been among the artists selected by Prof. Vittorio Sgarbi for direct exhibitions representing The State of Contemporary Art in Italy at museum venues across Italy, including the M. Rimoldi Modern Art Museum in Cortina d’Ampezzo (Belluno). She participated in the 1st and 2nd editions of the Contemporary Rome Art Award – International Exhibition of Contemporary Art at Palazzo Velli Expo in Rome, receiving the Action Painting award. Since 2019, she has participated in Rome Art Week, an event dedicated to contemporary art taking place across the capital.

Critical Presentations

"Solid experience and studied experimentation, supported by the accomplished pursuit of tactile legibility. At the foundation of a poetics of freedom, steeped in an innate passion for art—where the dialogue between author, artwork, and observer becomes the fulcrum and vector of emotion—Cristina Smeraldi’s work utilizes an informal and material stylistic signature that enhances the artifact across various levels of greater appreciation, plastic relief, and concession. The latter, in particular, escapes the inevitable imposition of the figure, firmly asserting and renewing the primacy of its own free interpretation. Expressed in artifacts created on canvas, where pastes and acrylics—mixed or layered depending on the intent, and ultimately veiled by final resin films—forge a personal and identifying language, punctuated by the expanse of fields whose blended colors enhance the depth of the work of which Smeraldi, a skilled narrator of delicate spontaneity, is the undisputed spokesperson."

Dr. Pietro Franca, Orizzoni Materici e Armoniche dell’incontro, 2026

"Cristina Smeraldi, a totally informal painter, reproduces the moods and colors of the landscape, recalling the colors of Morlotti found in the Rimoldi Collection." 

Prof. Vittorio Sgarbi, Paesaggi d’Italia, 2021

"The canvas is saturated with a brilliant blue color; applied with grace and composure across the entire surface, the color becomes dense and material when conceived as a binding agent, an element of suture within the folds (and wounds) of life. Intense tonal and chiaroscuro passages are accentuated by the plasticity of the pictorial matter, where gradations of blue represent the different phases of growth: chromatic dissonances and material harmonies become crucial moments that mark our existence."

 Dr. Ilaria Giacobbi, Inside Art, 2020