Presentazione “Arte Donna”

Intervista a Tove Hellerud

Intervista a Michelle Angela Jenkins

“So kind and so honest looks/my woman, when she greets others,/that every tongue becomes, shaking, mute,/and eyes dare not look at her” (Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova)

On the occasion of “International Women’s Day”, the Galleria360 organizes a contemporary art exhibition entitled “Arte Donna”, aimed at encouraging the knowledge of the various female artistic expressions and celebrating the combination of Women and Art.

The inauguration will take place on 8th  Thursday of  March 2018, at 19.00, in Via il Prato 11r, Florence. During the opening will also be offered a welcome drink while Jazz musicians’ll play live animating the evening and creating a pleasant union between Art and Music.

The muses in ancient Greece were the daughters of Zeus, divine creatures protecting the arts. They were invoked by poets and artists to be the source of inspiration for their works. Over time these mythological creatures have undergone a process of humanization: from goddesses of Olympus to real women. Equated with an angelic being, symbol of the sentimental side of existence, the female figure in fact over the centuries has been elected by many artists as inspiring  Musa or as favorite subject. The story is full of examples of women who have inebriated and inspired the minds of artists thus giving life to the most significant pages of art, literature, history, poetry: thanks to the idealized love for Beatrice, incarnation of the angelic woman, symbol of perfection, which transmits feelings of grace and virtue, the Supreme Poet signs his greatest masterpieces such as the “Divina Commedia” or the “Vita Nova”; Teresa Fattorini and a love never consummated due to the premature death of the girl for tuberculosis, gave life to the poignant and melancholic verses of Giacomo Leopardi, who made his muse immortal with the famous lyric “A Silvia”; Edie Sedgwick bewitched the famous founder of the Factory with her fragile beauty. In fact, Andy Warhol saw in the charming Californian heiress, who died at only twenty-eight years due to an overdose of barbiturates, “a walking pop art piece”, who inspired many of his works. Gala instead saved from the madness and premature death the famous surrealist painter Salvador Dalì, younger than her eleven years. The tormented love between the acclaimed theatrical actress Eleonora Duse and the most talked-about man of the time Gabriele D’annunzio, resulted in an artistic partnership that inspired the pages of the novel “The Fire”. The same actress answered firmly to a friend who, after reading the manuscript, begged her not to allow it to be published: “I know the novel I authorized the press because my suffering, whatever it is, does not count when it comes to give another masterpiece to Italian literature”. The aristocratic beauty and sensuality of Grace Kelly inspired the famous master of the chill Alfred Hitchcock. And yet the passion of the tragic love between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera gave us one of the most intense pages in the history of art. The Mexican painter in fact embodies the figure of the muse par excellence that with her tenacity not only inspired her husband but entire generations of artists.

On the occasion of the “International Women’s Day”, the Galleria360 wants to celebrate these inspiring muses and pay tribute to the entire female universe with the “Arte Donna” exhibition. The art director Angela Fagu and the architect Riccardo Piagentini have therefore selected female artists, from all over the world, signing an exhibition that projects the

Virginia Bazzechi Ganucci Cancellieri

[/cm