Virginia Tentindo Joya, international Jewelry Fair

For its second edition, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco partners with Joya, the international jewelry fair, to present creations by Virginia Tentindo (1931, Buenos Aires) made between 1978 and 1995, alongside two works by the visual artist recently acquired by the museum.

Virginia Tentindo exhibited her first sculptures at the age of sixteen and opened an art gallery at eighteen in Buenos Aires. In 1953, she moved to Paris, where she worked as a model maker, graphic designer, and book illustrator. For cinema, she recreated Napoleon’s coronation in figurine form for Abel Gance’s “Austerlitz” and made dolls for Nelly Kaplan’s film “La Fiancée du pirate”. She returned to sculpture in the 1970s. Myths, gods, demons, and chimeras take shape in her surrealist sculptures in bronze, ceramic, and marble, as well as in her jewelry and book objects.

Each of the jewelry sculptures presented at Joya is an original creation by the artist, made between 1978 and 1995, years during which she experimented with casting using the lost wax technique. She revisits her major works in miniature formats, with a sense of detail and meticulousness, revealing work of incredible finesse. For example, inside the Chat d’Octobre is La Mandragore, a mythical female figure created by Virginia in 1983, which was the trophy for the 36th Cannes International Film Festival.

Two works by the artist, acquired by the NMNM in 2022 following the exhibition “Monaco – Alexandria, The Great Detour. World-Capitals and Cosmopolitan Surrealism,” will be displayed alongside the jewelry: a sculpture, Ci-gît le verbe (2020), and a drawing, Pour que l’histoire recommence (1980).