I always thought that the eye of someone who does not know the canons of art would ingenuously be able to pick up - wherever it may be present - that „some thing more“ that the artist proposes „between the lines“ in his artistic work. And this is how it is whenever I, truly profane, set myself in front of a painting of Nicoletta Braccioni: it seems to me to be watching the classic body of a woman emerge from the decided brushstrokes of her fingertips, wrapped into the "fog" of blurred colours, giving a touch of sweetness lost centuries ago to this magnificent being made of paper or canvass.

What to be said about the series realised in Chicago, where the artist displays with subtle irony the drama of man who, bound to his effort of exceeding his limits, turns to tame his own shadows, almost as if it were a majestic predator („the tamer of shadows“), or carries out “dangerous circus practise” on a rocking horse, while putting to risk that children’s soul that each one of us keeps jealously wrapped up in his own cocoon of an apparent grown-up?

Nicoletta loves to propose all of this in form of paintings in which overbearing colours like oil and bitumen are dealt with in the same way as any delicate watercolour. Mythological figures, animals, men and women captured in an instant of their dramatic existence, often outlined by a single fleeting mark, which emerges only after the attentive observation of the one who, curious about the artist and the work, attempts to seize the essence and often remains just enchanted.

- Paola Cucchiarini