The Italian Projects

Three renowned Italian artists - Marilu Eustachio, Oliviero Rainaldi, and Cloti Ricciardi, were invited to visit our Tampa studio during the summer of 1995.  All three artists live and work in Rome and exhibit extensively throughout Europe. They represent some of the finest contemporary artists working in Italy.  Each artist spent several weeks with us and the Italian interpreters in our collaborative workshop. All of them created an exceptional series of prints. Temple University, our contact in Rome, helped coordinate our summer schedule with each artist while they were in Tampa.  They were invited to stay at the University of Tampa campus. The surrounding educational community helped find Italian speakers who spent many hours in the workshop with us, allowing the artists to communicate their individual creative needs.  Everyone enjoyed the cultural exchange as well as the unique artistic diversity of each artist Both our American and Italian exhibitions “Expanding Expressions” and “Transiti Italiani”, have since travelled to venues that were scheduled by the Polk Museum in Lakeland, Florida and supported by the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council.  Works from the collection are now in private and public collections, and the Italian artists have taken their own selections to exhibit in Rome.

   Marilu Eustachio completed a series of 25 variable editions and monoprints during her stay with us. Though there are “Angelo” (Angel) and “Fiore” (Flower) themes, her major works are of large expressive heads and mysterious timeless and androgynous figures in a state of transformation – some with universal and literary references.  Her dark black and bold lines express psychological and emotional conditions, and they are often hand-colored as she has decided to saturate the centrally placed images on and into the paper.  Her printing method is simple, direct, and spontaneous – an interaction with the paper and image.  The prints retain the expressive graphic quality of her painting and drawings – and her state of mind.  Her works are in many private and public collections in Rome and throughout Europe. Selected exhibitions include: World Women’s Conference in Beijing, China; Faccia a Facce- Galleria ‘la Nuova Pesa, Rome, Italy; Festival Dei Due Mondi-Spoleto; America/Italy; A Visual Dialogue That Continues, City University of New York; and Beauty is Difficult- Homage to Ezra Pound, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bolzano, Itlaly.

   Oliviero Rainaldi created a series of 11 small editions and monoprints while printing at the Tampa workshop.  His screenprints are based on a series of paintings he has entitled “Battesimi Umani” (Human Baptisms). They are all variations of one theme – the human figure on a Monochrome ground. Rainaldi transforms the figures to essential forms and shapes by a process of reduction and simplification.  He eliminates personal features and natural colors – and then tediously balances them on the rectangular empty plane of the paper.  Though they have become minimal forms they remain in the sphere of figurative art and create a visual metaphysical language that cannot be communicated by naturalistic means. The soft blue printing ink is overlayed by transparent whites which achieves an other worldly luminosity – a purification and transcendence of the figure on an expansive monochrome surface. The proportion and space between each figure and whether they face right or left is a deliberate formal decision that becomes a strategic part of the complexity of meanings he achieves in these works. His artworks, which include paintings and sculptures, are in many collections in Europe and the United States. Selected exhibitions include: Battesimi Umani, Gian Ferrari Arte Contemporanea, Milano; Galleria Baglioni Oddi, Roma; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Balogna; Il Tredicesimo Apostolo, Temple Gallery, Rome; L.A. Collezione, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, Museo di Umbertide; Being There/Being Here, Otis Parson, Los Angeles, California; Mezzanine Gallery, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

   Cloti Ricciardi created a series of 12 monoprints and small editions during her visit to our studio.  All are titled “Misura per Misura, Visioni Americane”. She continues to explore the qualities of space and time in her prints as she had previously in her sculptural installations. For her prints she selected materials that relate to the content of her work.  For “time” she used a “dated” Tampa newspaper, and for light reflection and optical illusion she chose silver inks and shiney mylar. As an iconic image one specific form was selected – the schematized silhouette of a flying bird which was often used as a decoy by hunters to attract birds (The trap whose beauty turns out to be false). For this series of prints Ricciardi in concerned with measuring the anomie of time and creating an image of it. We are lured by the beautiful form and shiney surfaces, and like Narcissus who falls in love with his own reflection, the spectator is attracted by an image that is neither false or true. Ricciardi is ranked among Itlaly’s most prominent contemporary artists. She was represented by a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Selected exhibitions include: the 45th International Art Show Biennale Venice, Italian Stand, solo show, “Misura Per Misura”;  Cose dell’altro Mondo by Laura Cherubini, Trevi Museum, Trevi; Art Energie, Passage de Retz, Paris; Sete, Bocchi Studio, Rome; Tutte le Strade Portano a Roma, Exposition Palace, Rome; Passeggiate Italiane, Transparenza dell’arte Italiana Sulla Viadella Carta, Peking, China; Italy Two, Museum of Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.