Annunziata Scipione, the naïf painter heir of Antonio Ligabue, on show in Milan

From July 11 to 30, 2019, the Fondazione Stelline in Milan is hosting the exhibition The Fire of the Earth. Annunziata Scipione, the second stage of an exhibition project dedicated to Annunziata Scipione (Camerale, 1928 - Teramo, 2018), one of the most interesting exponents of contemporary Italian naÑ—f, considered by many to be the true heir of Antonio Ligabue. Among Scipione’s greatest admirers was the great writer and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, who liked to call her a “peasant artist” and who recognized her “a fundamental dialectality that [...] has the value of a created language.” The Abruzzese artist powerfully represents the collective unconscious of a community, its need to recognize itself in archetypes, traditions, continuities that form a horizon of meaning, and merges it with her own desire to belong to a place, to be rooted in a land, to search for a horizon in which to situate herself.

The exhibition presents about fifty works, including paintings and sculptures, and is accompanied by the most important publication to date on Scipione: a rich monograph (edited by Silvia Pegoraro, with texts by the curator and Valentina Muzii, accompanied by a critical anthology) that presents almost 450 works, constituting in fact the first general catalog of the artist. The exhibition and publishing project thus proposes a double path through Annunziata Scipione’s entire oeuvre, from 1968 to her most recent expressive phase, which ended only a few months before her death on April 24, 2018.

Scipione’s artistic work began to emerge systematically in the late 1960s and early 1970s (her first sculptures were in 1968 and she began painting in 1972). “Because of the relatively late emergence of her artistic inclination, her story is akin to that of the most famous among American naÑ—f artists: Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known as Grandma Moses (1860-1961), whose paintings have been exhibited in the most important U.S. museums, including the MoMa in New York,” as Silvia Pegoraro writes. “Annunziata Scipione is, perhaps, placeable at the extreme limit of the naÑ—ve area, because of the complexity of her vision and the anthropological-cultural reflection that appears underlying it. Her works speak to us of the strength and richness of a female personality who pursued with vigor and serene determination the affirmation of her most authentic and profound vocation,” the curator continues.

The artist’s immense pictorial work also constitutes a kind of encyclopedic diary of the customs, work activities, and secular and religious traditions of the archaic-rural society of the places where she was born and lived, very similar, after all, to those throughout Italy until the postwar period.

A “documentary” that takes shape in fairy-tale colors, albeit pervaded by a solid and crystal-clear sense of reality and of belonging to one’s land.

Produced by the Big Match Cultural Association, in collaboration with the Naca Arte Cultural Association (Teramo), with the support of the Tercas Foundation, the CCIAA of Teramo and private entities, institutions and companies, this exhibition project enjoys the patronage of the Abruzzo Region, the Municipality of Milan, the Municipality of Pescara, the Municipality of Teramo and the Municipality of Tossicia (TE). Starting at the Aurum in Pescara, after the Milan event at the Fondazione Stelline, the exhibition Il fuoco della Terra. Annunziata Scipione will be set up at Palazzo Melatino in Teramo.

Annunziata Scipione, born into a farming family, the last of seven children. attended elementary school only until the third grade. Since childhood she has been endowed with an extraordinary artistic talent, which, however, she concealed until about age 40, when she began to make, with techniques learned as a self-taught artist, real wooden sculptures (1968) and paintings, especially oils on canvas (1972). As early as 1974/75 she began to establish herself nationally and internationally, exhibiting also in Paris and London. Much appreciated by Cesare Zavattini, she participated in seven editions of the National NaÑ—fs Prize, which he established in Luzzara(Reggio Emilia). On the occasion of the Holy Year of 1982/83, two of her paintings are chosen to celebrate and commemorate the event throughout Italy.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Foundation.

Pictured: Annunziata Scipione, Woman among Watermelons (1974; oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm). Ph. credit Marco di Marcantonio

Source: press release

Annunziata Scipione, the naïf painter heir of Antonio Ligabue, on show in Milan

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