The world of Sylvia Galli at the Pinacoteca cantonale Giovanni Züst in Rancate – Carlo Franza’s blog

The exhibition is part of the series of exhibitions dedicated to women artists, to which the Pinacoteca Zust in Rancate/Canton Ticino has always reserved particular attention, and intends to collect the main works created by Sylva Galli, providing a complete image of her career and comparing it with other presences active in the same years.
Sylva Galli, originally from Bioggio, developed her artistic career over a short period of time due to her premature death at only 23 years old in 1943.

After training at the Lugano drawing schools, he attended the Technicum in Fribourg and the Akademie Wabel, a private school of nude and landscape painting opened in 1939 in Zurich in the studio of Henry Wabel (1889-1981), thus orienting his painting also outside the Ticino territory.

The genres she deals with range from still lifes to portraits, landscapes, interiors, nudes, in which she expresses an artistic streak that is already mature despite her young age.

Two of his works are preserved in the collections of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, one in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome; the others, with the exception of some important pieces owned by the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana (Lugano), are still kept today by his descendants.

Sylva’s works are accompanied by a selection of paintings by other female painters of her time as a complement and useful comparison. The choice fell on those who dedicated themselves to artistic activity, attempting to make it a profession, starting from studies that were not only self-taught and participando to exhibitions: Anna Baumann-Kienast, Regina Conti, Rosetta Leins, Margherita Osswald-Toppi, Irma Giudici Russo, Anita Nespoli, Anita Spinelli, Mariangela Rossi, Irma Bernasconi-Pannes, Adelaide Borsa. A special section is dedicated to Germaine and Simonetta Chiesa, Pietro Chiesa’s wife and daughter respectively.

In the room where the itinerary begins, as an ideal premise, works by the few women with academic studies who dedicated themselves to art not only for pleasure belonging to previous generations are also presented: Adelaide Pandiani Maraini, Valeria Pasta Morelli, Marie-Louise Audemars Manzoni and Giovanna Béha-Castagnola. A non-philological reconstruction made with objects of the time is also proposed, with the aim of making people savor the themes linked to women’s work. They are on display in particular are two dresses designed by Rachele Giudici, a passionate scholar of traditional costumes still tied to the nineteenth century, even though her life took place mainly in the twentieth century.

The research and study work is documented through a richly illustrated catalogue, which aims to offer a first look at significant figures to reconstruct the evolution of the female presence also in the artistic field.

Carlo Franza