The works of Michela Fabeni have been analyzed by several internationally renowned critics. The observations signed by Alfio Borghese, Prince, writer, journalist, and international art critic, highlight the Smussato technique, the living material, and the interplay between light, shadow, and form, confirming the value and recognizability of the artist’s poetics. Borghese also holds the historical prestige of being the first to interview Pablo Picasso in Paris in 1966.

 

Art Critique by Alfio Borghese

Technique and Material
The works of Michela Fabeni reveal an absolute mastery of material and manual gesture. The Smussato technique executed with a palette knife and bare hands, the living surface, and the bas-relief on canvas create surfaces that seem to breathe.

Poetics and Symbolism
Each work is a fragment of experience, a bridge between the intimate and the universal. The ability to evoke emotion and memory transforms the material into a narrative.

Historical Value and Recognition
The several signed criticism confirm Michela Fabeni’s position in the contemporary art scene. The works, documented and commented on, demonstrate the coherence and strength of her research, consolidating the path toward historicization.

Consultation

Favorable opinions from art critics have generally been expressed on the artworks by our Artist of the Third Millennium,  Michela Fabeni as mentioned in the following (2023/ 2025): 

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''The subjects represented by the artist are soft and sensual, the curved line chases each other and together with the color makes his research refined.

 

A particular technique, certainly original and very personal, quick and decisive which serves to enhance the compositions, resulting pleasant and interesting.

 

The light that dominates the sculpted material images plays with the chiaroscuro of the bodies. The precious material of gold makes the figures represented even more valuable.

 

Few traits to describe feminine sensuality and charm. The golden or silver surfaces in their moving descriptions trap the light, reflecting it in other and numerous flashes.''

 

- Prince Alfio Borghese

Journalist, Writer and Art Critic

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​Art Critique by Antonio Fugazzotto 

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Antonio Fugazzotto is an art critic and cultural promoter, a keen observer of contemporary art and its evolving expressive languages. His analytical approach combines aesthetic sensitivity with symbolic depth, offering an interpretation capable of capturing the artist’s identity, technique, and vision.

On the occasion of the solo exhibition held on February 23, he dedicated a critical essay to the artistic path of Michela Fabeni, recognizing in the Smussato a unique, distinctive, and personal technique.

 

He highlighted the archetypal centrality of the female figure within her poetics and emphasized the artist’s ability to generate plasticity through the dialogue between light and matter, recalling a classical sensibility.

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Solo Exhibition, February 23, 2026

Circolo delle Vittorie, Rome 

Cultural Circle connected to the RAI network

"Roman artist Michela Fabeni stands out for her originality, sensitivity, and powerful expressive depth. The solo exhibition, conceived as a celebration of womanhood, featured eleven works, each dedicated to a different expression of the feminine universe.

Among them, particularly significant was the round bas-relief canvas Rebirth, created in pure white: a symbolic work in which the circular form evokes the cycle of life, continuity, and the return to light. The absolute, vibrant white becomes a space of regeneration and renewed awareness.

The distinctive hallmark of the artist is the Smussato, a unique, distinctive, and personal technique. Created with bare hands and a spatula, the Smussato arises from a direct, primordial gesture: the material is worked, smoothed, and guided toward a balance between tension and harmony. There is no imposition, but rather a dialogue with the material itself. The softened and shaped surfaces retain the memory of the original gesture and invite a perception that goes beyond sight, evoking touch as an additional form of communication.

At the center of the artist’s poetics stands the woman as an archetypal and universal figure. Her Women of Light embody tension and fragility, strength and conscious vulnerability. They are primordial models dwelling within the collective consciousness, portrayed in diverse situations and attitudes, yet always infused with an original and timeless energy.

The artist constructs compositional rhythm through a refined dialogue between light and shadow: light penetrates the material and generates plasticity, recalling an almost classical sensibility in which volume emerges from the encounter between chiaroscuro and form. The result is a pictorial sculpture capable of uniting gesture, matter, and meaning into a coherent and profound vision..

The exhibition took place on the occasion of the presentation of the book by Luca Palamara and Alessandro Sallusti on February 23, a date symbolically linked to the history of women, placing the event within a broader cultural context of dialogue, memory, and contemporary reflection".

 

-Antonio Fugazzotto

The speech was delivered publicly during the artist's solo exhibition.

 

Explore the event details:

https://www.michelafabeniart.com/post/an-outstanding-art-critique-by-antonio-fugazzotto-bas-reliefs-solo-exhibition-michela-fabeni-at

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​https://www.michelafabeniart.com/post/great-success-at-circolo-delle-vittorie-art-and-culture-in-dialogue-with-michela-fabeni-s-contempor

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https://www.michelafabeniart.com/post/solo-exhibition-by-michela-fabeni-at-circolo-delle-vittorie-art-and-culture-event-rome-february-23​​​​

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Critical Contribution Written

by Antonio Fugazzotto - 1/3/2026

A contemporary Roman Italian artist, also known as Artista del Terzo Millennio. This is what is known about her. It is also known that her atelier is an International Gallery born from a deep desire to share a language made of matter, light, and much more. I have also learned that Michela Fabeni has exhibited her works in Italian and international exhibition spaces: shows, fairs, and awards across Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Asia.

It is also known that each bas-relief on canvas is a unique work, entirely handmade, created through Smussato, a personal technique that involves modeling with a palette knife and forging with bare hands. All of this makes this artist a true protagonist, distinguished by an original, unmistakable style that renders every creation — or rather every "creature" — an unrepeatable living matter capable of dialoguing with light, shadow, and time.

But much more must be said. It must be said that she establishes a relationship with matter and light that can be defined as profoundly dialogical. Both matter and light are elements that can be captured and shaped. Yet only those who are truly sensitive to their essence can master the language that places them in emotional relationship and connection. She has understood — or rather, her soul has understood — the powerful emotional impact that can arise from waves of light and luminous beams in dialogue with matter.

Michela Fabeni succeeds in allowing the lights and shadows of her articulated and vibrant bas-reliefs to narrate the deep and unexpected stories of the feminine world that has always lived in depth.

A world firmly situated within the innate universal consciousness.
A world present in the collective unconscious of humanity, with the woman at its center — with her varied psychic forms that structure the experience of us all and manifest in myths, dreams, and symbols. Michela Fabeni’s poetic woman becomes the central pivot of a humanity searching for itself, a humanity that has wandered through history influenced by her behaviors but above all by her personality, for too long suppressed and diminished.

Not by chance is her research centered on a language that becomes an extraordinary key to decoding the value and scope of energies and impulses that for too long have been ignored, if not crushed.

Fabeni is an artist because she transforms her technical research into a privileged vehicle for constructing a powerful language of almost magical reach. A language that arrives through sensory, visual, and tactile experiences.

 

She is an artist because she knows that time, light, and air are extraordinarily creative accomplices in forging and shaping her works and in delivering them to the present — which already safeguarded them jealously within its collective archetype.​​​​​

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- Antonio Fugazzotto

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Every critical analysis represents for the artist a meaningful recognition of her creative journey, treasured with respect and gratitude.

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