Gina Pane was born in 1939 in Biarritz, France and spent most of her life working between Milan and Paris, where she died in 1990. She trained at the École Beaux-Arts in Paris and was associated with Edmee Larnaudie's Atelier d'Art Sacré [Studio for Sacred Arts] from 1961 and 1963. From the 1970s onwards, Pane became a defining figure of the international Body Art movement with her 'actions' - a series of highly choreographed events in which the artist subjected herself to intense physical and mental trials, exemplified by works such as Azione Sentimentale (1973), Action Psyché (1973/74) and The Conditioning (1973), during which she lay upon a metal bed frame suspended over burning candles. Pane stopped performing entirely in the early 1980s and began working in the fields of sculpture, installation and painting until her death. Her final series Partitions (1980-89), inspired by the lives of martyrs, led her to re-examine the portrayal of the body throughout the history of the visual arts, specifically in relation to the mystical and religious iconography of the Renaissance.