Presentation of the exhibition "The other half of the sky":

One senses in Elisa's work the profound need to transmit a "content", be it a philosophical thought, a moral teaching, a description of "reality" (never intended as a mere reproduction of its visible aspect) or even, in a more intimate and personal, a memory, a feeling, an emotion.

Well, if I were to suggest an approach to her painting, I would recommend keeping in mind how it always moves within the relationship between the "what" (it is expressed) and the "how" (it is represented). In fact, in a painting by Elisa there is not a single element (a line, a color, a depicted object) that does not "mean" something, that does not perform a function of communicating meaning.

There are some paintings, I am thinking for example of A Sun for Me, or of Form and Substance, which in the true sense of the word "can be read" since they are configured as real linguistic codes even if regulated by an analogical and visual grammar. In the Place of Silence (in which Valentina, Elisa's eldest daughter, is portrayed) we return instead to mimesis (i.e. the imitation of the visible aspect of reality). Here the landscape aims to be a mirror of the interiority of the person portrayed: the muffled, vaguely melancholic and shady atmosphere suggested by the chromatic range dominated by cold glaucous shades, browns and blacks, is subtly animated by a vibrant pictorial material made of long brushstrokes , stringy, loose and safe. Comparing this portrait with that of Beatrice, her other daughter, we have an immediate idea of how Elisa proceeds to regulate her language based on what she intends to express: a broad application of very light colors now gives us a dazzling light from which emerges , with a striking contrast of complementary colours, a drapery in the form of incandescent flames.

I wanted to take into consideration only the two extremes, that of abstraction and that of mimesis, but between the two poles we find (in the entire corpus of works on display) many other formal solutions that are different from each other. Can we therefore speak, regarding Elisa's painting, of a sort of stylistic eclecticism? In my opinion, yes, as long as this adjective means the fruitful variety of paths undertaken by a rich and lively spirit of research.

In my opinion, however, there are profound characteristics of Elisa's artistic work capable of bringing this expressive variety back to a condition of unity. If no element within a single work is random, neither are the choice of paintings, their arrangement or even their number (everything here means something, as we have said). The references of meaning between one work and another form an organic overall picture which takes the form of a small "system of thought", a small summa. It is a collection, as exhaustive as possible, of the author's considerations, emotions, stories and suggestions regarding a theme, that

of the female universe, which is thus approached from all points of view: there is the autobiographical approach but there is also the biographical one (as in the case of The Voice of the Shell which tells us about the human and psychological drama of Alfonsina Storni) ; we find the symbolic and arcane dimension of astrological knowledge in May 22, 1967 and the religious vision of the theological Virtues. Here is therefore what this unity can consist of: the author here lays bare her interiority, or her subjectivity, made up of both abstract thought and story, both rationality and emotion. This “I” shows us the way in which she sees the female universe but in doing so tells about herself.

What role do copies of famous paintings (Mucha, Picasso, Klimt, Sano di Pietro, De Lempicka) play? In terms of content alone, we could limit ourselves to saying that they rightly fit into the exhibition as they represent the point of view of some great masters on the female universe. But I don't think this is a sufficient explanation. The exhibition, in addition to being an insight into the author's interiority, is also an indirect description of her artistic development process (which certainly includes the observation of past masters). The play of opposites that we find on the level of meanings (beauty/vanity, material/ideal, feminine/masculine) is reflected in a pictorial research that proceeds by thesis, antithesis and synthesis. In this sense the Annunciation is paradigmatic. Although the usual iconographic attributes are reduced to a minimum here (almost invisible in truth), at first glance it is clear what the theme of the painting is.

This is because in it there is a "condensed" reworking, through synthesis, of some compositional solutions adopted over the centuries by the greatest painters who have dealt with this subject. In this painting there is the typical setting of fourteenth-fifteenth century annunciations but also the baroque swirl; there is figuration but also the material abstraction and gestural expressiveness of informal painting (further proof that for any painter worthy of the name categories such as "abstraction" or "figuration" have a very relative value).

Ultimately what do we find in this exhibition? A subjectivity that tells and tells itself, an Ego that wants to ascend to the spiritual dimension, to the world of ideas, and that chooses to make use of those expressive modalities deemed most useful from time to time in making this journey. Perhaps the best way to understand Elisa's painting is to bring it back to the very roots of contemporary art, that is, by comparing it to the attitude that the artists of the Romantic age already adopted. <<Whoever says romanticism [said Charles Baudelaire] says modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, colour, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed with all the means present in the arts>>.

Luca Canavicchio

Artist and art historian