Alba Savoi
_Under the sign of the fold
Curated by Paolo Cortese and Rosanna Ruscio
This is the first retrospective of the Roman artist, four years after her passing. The exhibition will present 40 works, including paintings, collages, sculptures and artist’s books.
The exhibition focuses in particular on the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, during which the artist explored the symbolic and material qualities of her chosen supports.
After an initial figurative phase that attracted significant public interest, Savoi began to investigate what lies beyond the figure, what is not visible but can be sensed and what exists in potential. Her attention was especially drawn to drapery and the “fold,” which she explored not only for its visual implications but also for its conceptual dimensions.
Mirella Bentivoglio recalled that although the act of “folding” could be associated with the feminine and domestic sphere, in Alba Savoi’s work it took on an entirely different meaning, so powerful and vital was her way of manipulating the canvas.
Her “folded and cut canvases” from the late 1970s questioned the autonomy of the pictorial surface, engaging in dialogue with Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical reflections on the fold and with the Baroque marble draperies of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. For the artist, this was not merely a stylistic choice but a vision of the world: the sign of a reality destined to unfold and reveal itself differently each time, the principle and the conclusion of her fifty-year-long research.
In the same way, repetition and sequentiality became recurring features throughout her work, as did the use of photographic images later digitally processed, which re-emerged as a field of experimentation connected to words and language.
All these aspects form the basis of this exhibition, which retraces the key moments of her artistic activity, here reconstructed in a precise and thoughtfully considered manner.
The exhibition is part of the project “Le ragazze di Mirella”, which Gramma_Epsilon Gallery dedicates to Mirella Bentivoglio and the artists she supported. It will be accompanied by a bilingual (Italian/English) catalogue curated by Paolo Cortese and Rosanna Ruscio, with contributions by Paolo Cortese, Rosanna Ruscio, and Tommaso Silvestrini.
