In Naples, Franca Pisani pays tribute to Matilde Serao with new works and an exhibition

From September 6 to 20, 2020, Castel dell’Ovo in Naples is hosting the solo exhibition of Franca Pisani (Grosseto, 1956) entitled Nel sogno. Homage to Matilde Serao, curated by Marina Guida with the collaboration of Marzia Spatafora. The exhibition presents to the public some 20 large- and medium-format works, including a sculpture.

As per the title, the exhibition intends to pay homage to Matilde Serao (Patras, 1856 - Naples, 1927), the great writer and journalist known for being the first woman in Italy to have founded and directed a daily newspaper(Il Corriere di Roma), several times nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. Pisani focuses particularly on the writer Serao: “My works,” the artist explains, “are dedicated to the writing and imaginary world of Matilde Serao, they collect the novellas, novels, characters the dates, a visual tale of an era and Naples.”

Franca Pisani thus returns to exhibit her works again in Campania (after the anthological exhibition at the beginning of the year at the Bourbon Prison in Avellino) with an exhibition that once again draws ideally from the female universe. “Art is a feminine noun,” often repeats the artist, who moreover has repeatedly addressed the issue of violence against women with her works. Designed especially for this occasion, the installation project is promoted by the Department of Culture and Tourism of the City of Naples as part of the “Summer in Naples 2020” event and consists of some 20 large- and medium-sized works, including a sculpture.

The title Nel Sogno (In Dream ) is borrowed from Matilde Serao’s novel of the same name published in 1897: the pictorial works thus represent abstract landscapes, still lifes, poetic suggestions of Matilde Serao, who delivered to the city of Naples memorable pages in which she described the Belly of Naples. Thus the artist intends to rework the poetic visions that were the writer’s and dedicates to her this exhibition project composed of works that take up titles from Matilde Serao’s writings: Blue Page, Hurray for Life, In the Dream, A Woman Speaks, An Unpublished Notebook, Voices of Things, Opal.

Following the principle ofut pictura poesis, Franca Pisani wants to intercept Serao’s poetics interwoven with silence, the persistence of memory, everyday things, the places of childhood and the need for love, and intends to transpose it into the paintings by basting a tale of herself and visions of the Neapolitan writer, not as a simple autobiography but as an inner search and expansion of her own experience to others who find themselves there as universal truths resurface. The exhibition, which features large fired linen “canvases,” smaller-format paintings and a sculpture, thus bears witness to a new chapter in Franca Pisani’s study of materials and the memory of some of the primordial elements of human history, which has always been one of the themes carried by the artist’s work.

Franca Pisani is an artist of international caliber: she began her artistic parabola in the 1970s and subsequently exhibited in Paris, New York and Chicago, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Nice, Madrid, Vienna, three times at the Venice Art Biennale (2009, 2011 and 2017) and in 2014 at the Royal Uffizi Post Office, in Florence, among others.

Image: Franca Pisani, Il sussurro del mondo (2020; oxides and lacquer, 100 x 100 cm)

In Naples, Franca Pisani pays tribute to Matilde Serao with new works and an exhibition

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