Académie des beaux-arts de Montréal

Co-Founder of ACADEM Romina Sol Catanzaro, born in Argentina, graduated from the Prilidiano Pueyrredon School of Fine Arts in painting and sculpture, and from the Cárcova Superior School, in scenography. She further deepened the foundations of her aesthetics at the studio of the writer Alberto Muñoz, in Buenos Aires. Established in Montreal in 2003, she studied film scriptwriting at UQAM and animation at the Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne. Since 2007, a fundamental element in her career, she has oriented her interests towards Western painting's classical language. She maintains links with the classical realist movement, consolidated in the United States around the 2000s. Her practice in the studio and her teaching is heavily impregnated with this language.

Romina Sol Catanzaro's works can be found in several private collections.

A.L Ash is a visual artist specializing in classical realism. After graduating from university in 2010, he studied Fine Arts in the United States, Spain and Italy before moving back to Montreal.

He has taken a variety of classes with American artists Justin Hess and Alicia Ponzio at Studio JHESS in San Francisco as well as workshops with Sadie Valeri and Felicia Forte.

From 2017-2019, Ash attended the Barcelona Academy of Art (BAA) and in 2020, the Florence Academy of Art in Florence.

Ash enjoys working from nature, building compositions using a creative mix of old master references and creating figures from imagination. He also has a fondness for plein air painting.

"High standards of drawing and observation are intrinsic to the production of good realistic work. In this endeavor, there is no easy path. To devote a portion of one's life to the pursuit of truth and beauty, we must tirelessly practice, study and experiment in our interpretation of observable reality.

Without a deep connection between mind, eye and hand, we are limited in our progress. Allowing the expression of the observable in one's own artistic language, without much thought or hesitation, is only possible if one can truly draw."

A computer engineer, Karim Aktouf has over 20 years of engineering experience. Founder of Puncteo, he runs workshops and teaches the Art of Creativity at the University of Montreal. He collaborates in Research and Development with Factry, the school of creativity sciences.
Karim is also an artist. An advanced student at the Académie des beaux-arts de Montréal, he designed the course "Digital technology in the service of the fine arts" focused on traditional drawing.

Eberhard Froehlich holds a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Strathmore College in Pennsylvania and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the Graduate School of Figurative Art at New York Academy. He earned several awards, particularly in the landscape. His works are found in several public and private collections.

Gianni Giuliano holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (painting and drawing) from Concordia University and a Master of Arts (painting) from the University of Quebec in Montreal. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Scholarship. His works appear in numerous public and private collections.

Marie Annebelle Hébert obtained a diploma + Art and culture from the Montreal based Bois de Boulogne College in 2013 after which she pursued full-time studies at the Académie des beaux-arts de Montréal where she now teaches drawing and painting.

Born in Slovenia (former Yugoslavia), Irena graduated from the Art Academy of Ljubljana, Slovenia and moved to Canada shortly thereafter. She is presently living in Montreal, where she obtained the Elizabeth Greenshields grant for figurative painting in 1994. Irena has taught classical painting since 1989, at Dawson College as well as the Saidye Bronfman School of Art. She is the founder of the ARTEDEA-BOHEMIARTE school approved by ARC where she specializes in the individual apprenticeship program for traditional painting techniques by Old Masters, including gilding and restoration. At the ACADEM she teaches the fundamentals of classical drawing and painting. Her work is found in many public and private collections in Europe and in North America. She received several awards at the International Salon of Classical Realism organized by the Art Renewal Center.

Born in Montreal, Robert began drawing as a child. In his early twenties, he continued his classical art studies at the Atelier in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He then studied with classically trained artists in Chicago and Boston. He continued his education by traveling to Florence where he studied the Old Masters. During this time he also traveled to France, studying the great academic and impressionist painters.

 Robert has been teaching art for over 11 years. "When it comes to teaching students how to draw and paint, I try to impart the techniques I have learned in order to observe and transcribe the visible world on paper, or canvas, without interfering with one's personal style or voice."

Lindsay Roels holds a master's degree in art history from the University of Quebec in Montreal. Originally from Belgium, she also obtained a bachelor's degree in art history and archeology at the Free University of Brussels after a 6-year teaching career. She has written texts in exhibition catalogues and numerous art critic articles in various specialized Belgian art journals.

Mélanie has been immersed in the arts since she was a child and has always been attracted to the artistic world. For several years, while pursuing her career as a fiction producer and business manager, she began a personal artistic practice. After having explored acrylic painting, she began studying drawing in Montreal with different teachers and then began a search for another medium of expression. This research made her discover the immense richness of oil painting and its thousand possibilities. She then undertook a trip to Rome where she continued her exploration of this medium accompanied by an artist specializing in master copies.

Today, her involvement with the school is multi-faceted as her management skills allow her to invest herself as the administrative director of ACADEM, while training her students in human and animal figure sculpture. She is still pursuing her studies in classical drawing and painting and is also the general manager of an Aboriginal documentary production company.