Wikipedia Draft:Irene Küng

Irene Verena Küng (15 May 1955) is a Swiss photographer and painter.

She has lived in Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy and the USA. Her paintings and photographs have been exhibited in collective and personal showings in the US, UK, Italy, Switzerland, France, Argentina and China and various other countries around the world. Her artwork is included several major private and public collections.

Early life
Irene Kung was born on May 15, 1953 in Bern Switzerland from a Swiss entrepreneur and a Canadian mother. After having studied in Switzerland and France she worked as a young fashion Model in Spain and Europe. She moved to Rome in 1976 where she graduated in graphic design. She worked as a graphic designer in New York and Rome where she opened her own agency working for multinational companies between 1978 and 2002.

She simultaneously pursued her relentless passion for the arts. She studied and perfected the techniques in sculpting, engraving, painting and photography as an apprentice of various artists and artisans in Italy. She then decided to focus mainly on painting which has subsequently become her key activity.

Career
Her first solo painting exhibition was in Rome in 1990 followed by other shows in New York and London. As a painter she modelled her techniques on those displayed in Etruscan, Roman, Renaissance and Chinese artwork. Her creations explored the tension between classical civilization and the modern world.

She added a camera to her palette of painting tools in 2006 and with the new medium, an exhibition of photos of Roman monuments launched her new distinctive art style in Rome that same year.

Between 2007 and 2021, several personal exhibitions followed in London, Buenos Aires, New York, Rome, Milan, Geneva, Santa Fe, Beijing, Hangzhou, Lucca, Lugano, Turin, Marseille. In addition to the above, she participated to numerous group exhibitions in Italy, Belgium, Bermuda, Russia, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Mexico, Turkey, Switzerland, Spain, South Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand and France.

She was invited to exhibit at Milan World Expo in 2015. .

She was invited to participate to the Beijing Genesis project in 2018.

She was asked to perform the Timeless Machine Art Project for Porsche in 2018.

Books
She has published in 4 different languages The Invisible City, 2013 winner of the PDN Photo Book Award. Her other book Trees was the 2016 winner of the International Photography Award in Nature and Fin Art categories.

Her art work was also published in 5 other books along with major other major artists (Bulgari Y Roma Madrid 2016, Homeward Selection from the Wieland Collection New York 2016, Nine Photographers for the Planet Rome 2015, Henri Cartier Bresson and the Others Rome 2015, Civilization: The Way We Live Now, Sense of Place Brussels 2012)

Style
Her work is mostly noted for her ability to capture still-life subjects such as monuments, trees, animals and her skills in remastering digital photography and printing enables her to create images that transmit the emotions of subjects portrayed setting her apart from the mainstream of modern photography.