Villa Carlotta pays homage to Luisa Albertini, a multifaceted artist and a prominent figure in the Larian cultural scene. During her long career she has experimented with various techniques, all well represented by the selection of works chosen for “Luisa Albertini, day by day. Signs, Shapes, Colors”, from September 21 to December 8, 2024, set up at Villa Carlotta. The inauguration on September 21 at 11:30.
At the centre of the exhibition, curated by Elena Di Raddo, Darko Pandakovic and Maria Angela Previtera, are the tapestries and jewels designed and created by the artist from Como between the 1960s and 1980s of the last century, alongside some examples of enamels on copper, painted woods, acrylics on canvas.
Over fifty works in total, to which are added another sixty preparatory drawings and sketches.
Each of the nine spaces, articulated in the Gallery of Villa Carlotta, hosts works that are similar in shape, color, and prevalent expressiveness, suggesting a sequence, a tone in which the visitor can find connections, a search for meaning, a level of concentration and emotion. The idea is expressed at different graphic scales: some small drawings, like a seed, contain the development of the large tapestry on display.
Uncontainable shapes and colors, born from Luisa Albertini’s fascination with the world of the symbolic, the original and ancient primitive civilizations. The subjects of the works reveal suggestions drawn from her numerous interests, both in the history of art and in craftsmanship and popular culture.
Imagination and dreams, the dark and mysterious forces of reality are extremely important areas for her, to be interpreted in art but
also to be studied through the readings of Carl Gustav Jung, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Poulet, Erich Fromm. The “tapestries”, as the artist herself defines them, are not actually works based on warp and weft, but inlays, therefore assemblages of textile materials (hemp, linen, jute, cotton or cloth).
The deliberately rough appearance, especially in the early works, involves the use of pieces of fabric joined together in such a way as to leave the seams clearly visible, entrusting the harmony of the overall effect to the curvilinear shapes and above all to the bright colours, but perfectly balanced in their tones.
In his subjects, in addition to Africa, Albertini looks to the peoples of Latin America, certainly to the Aztecs, but more generally to the ancient indigenous civilizations of South America, from Peru to the Amazon, who in their clothing fabrics (tejidos and ponchos) have reworked the original motifs drawn from tradition, still visible on archaeological finds, in zoomorphic, anthropomorphic or abstract variants. Apotropaic symbols, simplified forms of animals and plants, even in the apparently solar tapestries, symbolize the fears and the bursting force of nature, which are mixed syncretically, as Paul Gauguin did, with Western religious and cultural symbols.
The absolute protagonist of his imagination is the human creature, man and woman, drawn with a flat line, and synthesized in the heads, frontal and more often in profile, from which the arms and hands start directly, as in the metamorphic works of Pablo Picasso.
These same motifs are also interpreted in the jewels, made of poor materials, but expertly treated by hand to highlight their texture and color: enameled copper, silver, nickel silver, silver-plated brass. The world of Jungian archetypes, the magic of astral symbols, astrology and idols, masks and primitive fetishes are undoubtedly the world in which the
“creatures”, the figures that populate the tapestries, jewels and later the paintings of Luisa Albertini. Creatures that Luisa lived with in her studio, that she brought to life and that she even called by name.
Luisa Albertini was born in Como in 1918. Her long artistic career, between the 1930s and the early 2000s, involved a variety of techniques. Her first works were studies ‒ portraits and drawings from life ‒ and graphic works. In 1951 she presented enamelled terracotta at the IX Triennale. In 1955 Mario Radice commented flatteringly on a series of her watercolours on display in Como. In 1959, at the Barbaroux Gallery in Milan, she exhibited enamelled works on copper and bronze, a technique she also used to produce household objects. The central moment of her artistic life was between the 1970s and the 1990s: she created tapestries, painted wood, metal sculptures and jewellery. She held numerous solo exhibitions: at the La Colonna, Libera Parini, Atrio galleries in Como, at Mosaico in Chiasso, at Il Gabbiano in La Spezia and Ferrari in Brescia. She also produced a series of etchings and aquatints. In the last phase of his activity he devoted himself to painting on canvas and on wood, the theme of his solo exhibition in Como in 2003. In 2016 his works were exhibited at the Triennale di Milano in the review W. Women in Italian Design and in 2022, in Como, in Abstract. Women and Abstraction in Italy 1930-2000. He disappeared in Como in 2018.
Carlo Franza