Biography

Franca Frittelli introduces herself as follows: “I am a daughter of art: I come from a family of writers, historians, artists, architects: Riccardo Marchi, writer and poet, Vittorio Marchi, historian of Livorno, Virgilio Marchi, architect and set designer who signed with Antonio Sant ‘Elia del Manifesto of futurist architecture, as well as lecturer at the Centro di Cinematografia Sperimentale in Rome. As a child my house in via dei Prati in Livorno was always frequented by writers, painters and architects”. The artist has her atelier in a beautiful park in Vada, in the municipality of Rosignano. She is a professor of art history: drawing, scenography, entertainment, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. She is socially engaged, lectures and has publications on the social history of female art in gender difference, in fact she has obtained the II level master’s degree on Complexity, gender difference at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pisa. You are president of the artistic and cultural association La Torre Artivisive and have held numerous sculpture, theatre and audiovisual workshops. You have participated in numerous national and international sculpture symposiums, during which you have exhibited monumental sculptures in marble, granite and wood. In November 2020, her biography, Fiori di pietra (author Michele Dattolo), was presented at the Casa della Cultura in Milan, by Prof. Giuliana Nuvoli.

Philosophy

Franca Frittelli began painting as a child and as an adult she began working in the theatre in the first experimental group Teatro Vita in Livorno, as an actress and author. Her last teacher was Franco Nonnis of the Teatro Stabile of L ’Aquila. She the artist is attracted to the human figure and the movement of the human body. You work with different materials: marble, stone, ceramic, bronze and wood, to name but a few. In her works a strong plastic sense is perceived and the accentuation of the roundness of the masses is evident. Tommaso Paloscia says of her: “[…] These are figures that within have the echoes of a triggering energy, almost the soul in eternal rebellion that the sculptress insinuates in the clay, plaster, resins but also in the marbles and in travertine: with an apparently uncultivated expressive capacity which is instead experienced in the study of the many disciplines attended and of which it carries with it footprints…”. Her poetry declared about her is: “Every moment, every day, we live the infinite greatness of our “being” – art is life itself”.

Artwork in Castagno

The artist is one of the last to have been involved in the open-air museum of Castagno founded by the critic Tommaso Paloscia. Her relationship with Paloscia is lost in the mists of time, she remembers it thus: “Tommaso curated one of my first exhibitions in Versilia at” L ‘Arlecchino”. A sympathy and a sentimental and intellectual feeling was immediately born which was transformed in the course of various artistic presentations into profound esteem and affection. Tommaso edited my solo show at the Tuscany Region in 2005. At the end of the exhibition he gave me a silent farewell glance, but full of meaning, which saddened me very much. My dear friend would be leaving soon. I have never felt such deep sorrow and an emptiness, so difficult to fill: so strong was his person from all points of view of him. I owe it to him if I have profitably directed my artistic productions. After his absence I remember him with love, the image of him is always alive. He used to meet in the company of his wife by the sea in Vada, attending debates on art with my students and at the historic Torre del Faro di Vada in the municipality of Rosignano Marittimo. I always feel emotion. Dear Tommaso, your essence is always among us”.

The Venus of 2000 sculpture was donated directly by the artist to the Castagno collection and recently (in October 2020) placed by Simonetta Paloscia in the Piazzetta delle artiste donne (Women arists’ little square) in front of Casa Paloscia in La Vigna (Castagno). It is a sculpture in yellow stone from Rosignano, a stone from a local quarry which is now disused. The aesthetic-formal archaeological references are evident: the statue reminds us of “prehistoric venus”, “when femininity, the female symbol was of fundamental importance: the creation of all the forces of nature, of mother earth,”procreation”, the physiognomic traits matter little, what matters is its volumetric prosperity, the center of everything and all individuals. But my Venus is bent today: it is not erect, it has not yet regained that ancient power, that fundamental importance, ”the power of the centrality of the world”. There is still a long way to go for its visibility, so much still has to suffer in order to be there at all levels. The surfaces are a little smooth and a little wrinkled, the volumes, its compositional elements, involve us, communicating a sense of tender poetry despite the position. The volumetric masses do not disturb, indeed in all this contrast we are involved in its delicacy and its lightness”. In Venus of 2000 the figure of the woman is intentionally deformed in an expressionist manner in an extreme and accentuated pose, deliberately unrecognisable, because, as the art critic Antonella Serafini finds: “[…] in these extreme poses a deliberate” unrecognisable” of the woman at the cost of shattering the canons of harmony when it turns out to be nothing but her prison”.

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