It is with great sorrow that the Artists Guild announces the passing of long-time Guild member Renata Maria Spiazzi.

Renata was born in Trieste, Italy, on January 10, 1926.  She had a passion for the arts at a very early age and received training in oil painting, drawing, pottery, sculpture and jewelry-making. During WWII she supported her family by working in advertising at the Unione Pubblicita' Italiana in Trieste.  She married Mario Spiazzi in 1952 and the couple left Italy for the United States where she finished her education in arts & crafts. 

After Renata had received the California Community Colleges Certificate of Qualification for Teachers of Classes for Adults, she started teaching drawing, painting, sculpture and graphic arts at the San Diego Community College while creating her own art and commissions in her spare time. Her works have been shown in private collections throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe and is on permanent display in the New York Public Library.

She was also the owner of Renée's Children Manufacturing and Designing Clothes in La Jolla from 1953 through 1980. 

After Renata retired from teaching in 1991, she bought her first computer and started a career focusing on digital art. She learned how to work with software programs like Photoshop, Ultra Fractals, and others to create colorful fractals which then formed the basis for her abstract compositions.

Renata's digital work became so well-known and acclaimed that MOCA, the Museum of Computer Art, named her as one of only 17 Grandmasters of Digital Art, choosing her from thousands of artists who have exhibited at MOCA.

Renata stated about her foray into digital art:  When I discovered the potential of the digital tool I decided that I did not want to do an oil painting, a watercolor, or even a wood cut. I wanted to take advantage of what the computer had to offer. Fascinated by filters and then by fractal programs I started making compositions using the non-objective images given to me by fractals fragments and a new world opened up for me. I am completely taken by fractals now and I compare my compositions to music. It is not what it looks like, but what it makes you feel when you look at it!

Besides the Artists Guild, Renata was a member of many arts associations, including the San Diego Visual Arts Network, Sculpture International, National Sculpture Society, San Diego Computer Society, the Society of Experimental Artists, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, Siggraph, and the International Association of Fine Art Digital Printmakers.

The Artists Guild has selected Renata as one of the Guild’s one hundred extraordinary members who will be commemorated in the Guild’s upcoming Centennial Book.

As we bid good-bye to Renata, we will always remember her as a remarkable artist and a wonderful lady whose works will inspire us for many years to come and her strong support of the Guild and its mission.  We will greatly miss her.

The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild