Santina Semadar Panetta Brings Neo-Pointillism to Miami
- adriana
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
When Art Miami opens its doors this December, one of the most luminous debuts will come from Italian-Canadian artist Santina Semadar Panetta, who is presenting two paintings with New York-based Artifact Projects. Known for founding the Neo-Pointillism Movement, Panetta creates work that feels alive – paintings that shimmer, shift, and seem to breathe with emotion.
Born in Calabria, Italy and now based in Montreal, Canada, Semadar has spent her career reimagining the classic pointillist technique for the modern world. Her canvases are composed of thousands of dots of color that come together in radiant harmony. She calls this the Polychromy of Synthesis, a way of using color to build rhythm and energy until the surface seems to pulse. “My art walks a path deeply rooted in culture, knowledge, and existential strength,” she explains. “It is a journey of philosophical depth and chromatic intensity. My art speaks to the soul.”
Her approach combines the rigor of philosophy with the sensuality of paint. Semadar often cites Jean-Paul Sartre and Gaston Bachelard as muses, grounding her visual language in reflections on being, time, and consciousness. The result is art that feels both cerebral and deeply human.
Semadar’s career has taken her to many of the world’s most prestigious stages. She has exhibited at the Carrousel du Louvre and Grand Palais in Paris, MEAM in Barcelona, and was chosen to represent Canada at the International Biennale of Art of the Mediterranean in Palermo, where she received the Art Ambassador Award from the Canadian government.
At Art Miami, her two featured works bring her vision vividly to life. In Souls Connections (2022), a vast, luminous landscape evokes nature’s endless cycles – trees stretch upward, suspended between earth and sky. Built from meticulous dots of color, the scene feels both rooted and transcendent. “It captures the feeling of nature’s endless cycles colliding with a single, fleeting moment of consciousness,” she notes.
Her second painting, Ciel et Terre (Heaven and Earth) (2023), turns to the palm trees of Sunset Boulevard for inspiration. The image, radiant and alive, is a meditation on aspiration. The palm, an ancient symbol of eternity, seems to radiate light from within. Each hue hums with movement, drawing the viewer into what the artist calls “a hidden world of dreams and wonder”.
For Semadar, Miami feels like the perfect setting for this debut. “I believe that understanding antiquity empowers artists to create the future,” she says – a fitting statement for a city that thrives on reinvention. Her paintings remind us that art can still do what it has always done at its best: connect the physical and the spiritual, the modern and the timeless.
