Katy Castellucci, la Scuola Romana e oltre

The exhibition presents the whole creative career of the artist, an important figure in the artistic panorama of the first half of the 20th century and one of the most sensitive interpreters of the Scuola Romana (Roman School). Through the exhibition of about 60 paintings, 10 gouaches and 30 drawings, the artistic environment in which the painter moved and worked is retraced.
   
The exhibition presents all the frequent themes in the artist's work, from portraits to landscapes, from self-portraits to still lifes, from female nudes to abstract compositions. Among the most significant works are Autoritratto alla finestra (Self-portrait at the window) of 1935, Ritratto di Giacomino (Portrait of Giacomino) of 1937, Nudo con panno a fiori (Nude with flowered cloth) of 1943, Le sorelle (The sisters) of 1945 and after the war, in his neo-Cubist phase, Autoritratto con il compasso (Self-portrait with compass) and Cupole a Roma (Domes in Rome) of 1953.

A group of works also reconstructs her family environment and her association with artist friends, such as the portraits made of her by Ziveri and Mafai; the delightful painting The Castellucci Family (1934) and Katy with a Dachshund (1937), both by Ziveri; the portrait Katy made of Titina Maselli (1942), and others.

Born in Laglio on Lake Como in 1905, Katy Castellucci moved to Rome in the early 1920s, where she attended art school. The daughter of the painter Ezio, a refined illustrator and painter in the academic tradition, from a very young age she revealed a particular artistic talent, also as a dancer. In 1926 she went to Paris with her sister Guenda, where she stayed for two years and in 1927 took part in Enrico Prampolini's Futurist Pantomime at the Théatre de la Madeleine. On her return to Rome she frequented the most significant artists of the Roman School, including Ziveri, Mafai, Fazzini, Scipione and others. In 1932 she exhibited for the first time at the III Sindacale with two works, but the really important exhibition was her first solo show at the Galleria della Cometa in 1936 together with Adriana Pincherle, Alberto Moravia's sister. Among the other works on display at the exhibition was the extremely delicate Self-portrait of 1935, now in the Museum of the Roman School at Villa Torlonia. The critics immediately noted the quality and intense poetry of her painting, placing her among the most sensitive artists of the Roman School.

In the years after World War II, besides dedicating herself intensively to teaching, first in Modena and then at the Institute of Applied Art in Rome where she founded the section of textile design, Katy Castelluccisi also devoted herself to set design and theatrical costumes. Present at the VI Quadriennale in 1951, together with her father, in the same year, in a personal exhibition at the Galleria dello Zodiaco, she presented her neo-Cubist paintings, within a trend that was then widespread in Italy of reinterpretation of the European culture: works with an original structure, where the clear cuts of the images are combined with tonal values. Aware of the profound changes that painting was undergoing, she drastically reduced her commitment in this field and, from the end of the 1950s, gave up participating in the exhibitions to which she was invited. The neo-Cubist phase was followed by a number of more experimental abstract attempts that were not intended for real exhibition purposes, a part of which is shown here to document her teaching at the Art Institute. Until the last years of her life (the artist died in Rome in December 1985 at the age of 80), she produced many drawings of great quality, for the most part independent of her paintings, in which the shaded and shadowy lines of the early years gradually became more incisive and essential.
 
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with contributions by: Sandro Pagliero, Fabio Benzi, Claudia Terenzi, Duccio Trombadori.
   
The exhibition, promoted by Roma Culture, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali and the artist's grandson Alessandro Pagliero, is curated by Claudia Terenzi and Fabio Benzi.