Armida "Pupa" Nardi is an artist critically acclaimed for her inventive, almost mystical creations. She likens the shapes of the organic world – crags and ravines, folds, stones and pools – to the subtle movements at the depths of her soul. Interested in ancestral memory, afterlife and esoteric wisdom, Nardi’s wild abstractions are tantamount to a devotional practice. Voluptuous blossoms with free-flowing curvature and buttery crevices serve as hieroglyphs expressing Nardi’s amatory idealization of and connection to the natural world. Influenced deeply by her time abroad, particularly in the dry heat regions of Arizona and Utah, Nardi’s paintings on canvas in oil and sand recall the work of Georgia O’Keefe, the brave spiritual denizen of American Modernism also known for her large format flowers.
Born in Florence, where she currently lives and works, Armida “Pupa” Nardi developed her creative abilities in her mother’s textile studio where she began to experiment with embroidery, designs and precious fabrics at an early age. Since 1998 she has painted full time.