Biography

'Nec Spe Nec Metu' - Caravaggio

Bruce Dalzell Atherton was born in 1968 and from early childhood followed his vocation of becoming an artist. Upon completion of his Foundation course at St.Martins in London, Bruce decided that he preferred to remain outside of the art school system and continued to train as an autodidact, whilst working in the commercial art sector.

In his mid twenties Bruce felt it was time to return to his fine art full time and made the bold move of relocating to Rome in Italy to frequent the Scuola Libera del Nudo, an advanced life painting school. During this time Bruce's work developed greatly, and he began exhibiting.

In 1999 he formed part of the artistic movement ‘Neoiconica’, founded by the celebrated Roman art critic Guglielmo Gigliotti and in collaboration with the ‘Studio di Arte Cannaviello’ in Milan, one of the major galleries in Italy, began a series of prestigious exhibitions at an international level. Bruce was also one of the founding artists of the movement 'Metropolism' which also went on to exhibit in many state-run institutions and was promoted by the famous Italian critic, Professor Bonito Oliva.

In 2001, Bruce won official recognition at the XXIII annual international exhibition of fine art in Sulmona, winning the Targa D’Argento, and shortly after, he began his collaboration with the gallery Magrorocca in Milan.

2001 heralded the beginning of another important phase of Bruce's career when he was asked to collaborate with the Vatican in Rome painting new images of neo-canonized saints and official portraits. Bruce completed 13 official paintings for the Postulation of the Vatican, and continued to collaborate with the Vatican until 2007.

In 2004 Bruce returned to London to finalize his education receiving his master degree in Digital Art with distinction at University of the Arts, London and began working for the research department with Dr. John Tchalenko. In 2006 Bruce started collaborating with Factum-Arte in the production of large scale airbrushed artworks, for the high end art market.

Bruce is currently developing his new works and is preparing a series of upcoming exhibitions, in Denmark, Germany and the UK.