Elisa Zadi/The pictorial act as a search for truth and beauty

by Romina Ciulli and Carole Dazzi

Bruciare illusioni, PicNic (2023)

The portrait, and the self-portrait, are the forms with which the artist Elisa Zadi investigates the bond between man and nature. A research that ranges from painting to installation, from performance to poetry, and that through an intimate and introspective path focuses on issues related to femininity, identity, and knowledge. In her works the human figure stands out in all its frank and refined frontality, giving life to a narrative that is not only pictorial, but above all anthropological and existential. Thus emerges a spontaneous and suggestive creative act, often represented through the fragmented idea of polyptychs, where the images seem to make use of a symbolic connotation to reflect on the complexity and fleetingness of everyday reality and human relationships. Read more

Open dialogues: Cristina Barbieri

by Margaret Sgarra, contemporary art curator

Cristina Barbieri is a visual artist born in Reggio Emilia, city where she graduated as a Master of Arts in the”Goldsmithing-Metals” section, and where she obtained a specialization in Marble Sculpture. Starting from 2022 she began to be interested in bioart and biodiversity. This passion led her to undertake an investigation towards mycology, which today is a central issue of her research and artistic poetic.

 

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Who’s next?… Franz Sedlaceck

by Valentina Biondini, art and literature amateur

La biblioteca, 1939

What is the definition of irony for a calamity visionary as I have been defined? Dying? Or worse, disappearing mysteriously in one of the military campaigns conducted during what was, in fact, one of the bloodiest calamities in human history, the Second World War? But let’s go in order. My name is Franz Sedlacek and, rightly or wrongly, I was one of the main Austrian artists active between the two world wars.

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When art releases life/Donatella Ferrini and her novel Sulle Gambe

by Romina Ciulli e Carole Dazzi

Susan Sontag stated in her essay On Photography (1977): “No one has ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty”. In fact, photographic art-fact often invites us not just to reflect, but above all to glimpse a power in the visual image capable of arousing deep emotional reactions within us. As if, suddenly, through that shot, our gaze was able to see something that goes beyond custom, pushing us further. This is what happens in the book “Sulle gambe” by Donatella Ferrini, currently on pre-order on bookabook in a crowdfunding campain with the aim of publication, in which her young protagonist changes the painful approach to the vicissitudes of his life precisely after observing a picture. Let’s talk with the writer. Read more

Franco Nicolosi/Sculpture is an immaterial body

by Romina Ciulli e Carole Dazzi

Riflessioni di Superficie, 2002

The works of the artist Franco Nicolosi come from a deep intimate reflection. A sort of continuous sensorial interconnection where matter translates into an unexpected creative process, albeit meditative. An experiential practice, characterized by forms with unmistakable, sinuous and rhythmic traits. Forms that seem suspended between past and present, but that open to a constant and lasting dialogue. Here then are vases and drawings made with different materials, including clay, graphite, wood or ceramic. And, although each work follows a different specific path, they all eventually intertwine again, triggering reflections on concepts such as duplicity, symbolism, awareness and transformation. Read more