Eleonora Gianfermi is an Italian artist based in Germany. She paints emotional portraits on wood panels bold, raw, and alive before they are understood.

She doesn’t paint faces. She paints what lives behind them: the quiet pride, the unspoken tension, the moment someone decides to go further.

Her medium is acrylic on wood. The choice is intentional. Wood is not passive t has grain, resistance, memory. She works into it with force, scratching and layering until the surface holds the same tension as the feeling she’s painting. The irregularity stays. That’s the point.

Every portrait begins from a moment she can’t let go of a glance, a presence, a hidden story. Her brush doesn’t chase perfection. It seeks honesty.

Eleonora’s work has been exhibited internationally in New York, London, Berlin, Bali, Rome, Hamburg, and across Germany. Her pieces live in private collections around the world.

She has been selected as one of the 100 Emerging Artists 2025 by Arts to Hearts Project, an international recognition for artists redefining contemporary art.

In 2014 she was selected for Premio Celeste, international prize for contemporary art, in the painting category.

She has been featured in Left Magazine, ArtistCloseUp, Schwäbische Zeitung, Seebote, and other publications.

Artist Statement

I don’t see. I feel.

It begins as an intuition, something unnamed, growing quietly in the unconscious until it connects with an image. Not a face. A possibility. The unseen potential of a person that hasn’t found its form yet.

My work is an attempt to make that visible.

I paint on wood because wood is alive, like skin. It holds every mark, every scratch, every layer of time. I treat it, age it, sometimes rejuvenate it, always according to what the painting needs, not what I plan. The surface becomes part of the truth.

Acrylic moves fast and demands decisions. There is no hiding in it. What stays on the wood is what was real in that moment, the tension, the force, the feeling that refused to be polished away.

These are not portraits of how people look. They are portraits of what people carry, the quiet pride, the unspoken strength, the moment before someone decides to go further.

I paint what words haven’t found yet.

My works don’t just celebrate strength, they preserve the full spectrum of what it means to be alive and free. The fire and the tenderness. The power and the humanity. The warrior and the woman.

If you’re someone who knows that real freedom comes from embracing every part of yourself, not just the polished parts, this work is for you.