Note biografiche inglese - Capodiferro Gabriella

Gabriella   Capodiferro, born in Chieti in 1942, is an artist with fifty years of   experience belonging to the European Informalism. She has been running a   creative workshop for over twenty years and has been promoting  cultural  events all over Italy.

Her  penchant for Art did not reveal itself  clearly since her childhood,  but Gabriella now still remembers when, as a  child, she used to isolate  herself from friends to do experiments with  tissue papers, dunking,  flouring and painting them.

She  started to  attend the Art School thanks to her careful and inspiring  mother. In her first school years she suffered from recurring headaches  that hindered  her from being completely focused during lessons. At the  end of the  Middle School her teachers advised her to join the teacher  training  school but Gabriella’s mother, a creative and witty teacher,  had noticed  her daughter’s sketches so she encouraged her to try the placement test  to enrol the Arts High School.

It  was the year 1956 and that was a  difficult examination: among the  subjects Gabriella had to pass a  Descriptive Geometry test whose task  was to draw a spiral to perfection.  However she successfully did it and  she was allowed to attend the Arts High School in Pescara. So she  started to travel daily between Pescara  and Chieti, where her family  had moved a few years before, until grim  news alarmed her parents who decided to make her move to the Arts High  School in Chieti.

At  that time the Arts High School in Chieti was one  of the best in Italy  so Gabriella had the chance to meet such  illustrious artists as  Montini, Diano, Spiezia, Quocolo and the ceramists Bontempo and  Bozzelli.

In  that school she did learn applied  arts: the school took part in such  important competitions as the  National Competition of Ceramic Art in  Faenza and she learned how to  design well, and that was very important  for her transition from  Figurative Art to Informalism. She also learned  how to use ceramic  colours to paint majolica and her passion for  tactile arts made her lay  aside graphic arts for a while. During that  period she had a strict  teacher, Mr Antonio Di Fabrizio, who used to  demand that pupils reproduce stuffed birds.

In 1960, after her High School diploma, Gabriella Capodiferro enrolled for the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where she met Professor Bruno Saetti   who would become her academic advisor. He taught her the importance of   “the line” because “In drawing”, as he put it, “it is the line which   speaks and not what it represents”.

Thanks  to the period spent in  Venice she gained a great wealth of experience:  for the first time she  portrayed a nude model on a two-metre-long  piece of paper  using merely a pencil; moreover, she was hosted by the  Dominican Sisters  of St. Imeldine in Venice and she started a close  friendship with  Silvana and Mariella who prevented her from being  isolated by the other  schoolfriends because of her Southern Italian  origins.

At  that time  Venice was genuine, a cultural city in ferment, not yet the  present popular tourist destination. With her friends she used to take  refuge in  the Querini Stampalia Library that was used to be open until  midnight  and where she would read up on the History of Art.

During her second year of Academy, in 1962, Gabriella held her first one-woman exhibition of her paintings at the historical Café Eden in L’Aquila and she created her own brochures.

The   visitors’ feedback confirmed all her doubts about her nude paintings   which she herself  perceived too academic, so she realized that she had   to work more distinctively, in a genuine and authentic way.

In  1964,  after finishing the Academy, she became an Art teacher and first  worked  for the Technical School for Surveyors “E. Fermi” in Lanciano  and some  years later for Liceo Scientifico “G. Galilei” in Pescara.

Gabriella was just 22 and her wish to stand out as an artist took her to the well-known Margutta Art Gallery in Rome. Once there, Ms Leda dampened her   enthusiasm showing hostility towards female artists who usually abandon   their job once married, causing in so doing a drop in the market value   of their works of art. That was the reason why she refused the young   artist’s paintings. However, guessing her talent, Ms Leda invited her to go again to assess her progress over time.

On  October 4th 1969  Gabriella Capodiferro married Antonio Taricani, her  husband for all her  life. He has always been fully aware of her  temperament: only 4 days  after their wedding Gabriella organized her  first one-woman  exhibition in “San  Marco” Art Gallery in Rome. Unfortunately the  exhibition had demanded a  great investment and in the end the result was  disappointing. But this  event gave her the opportunity to see that Antonio was a great support  to her. In fact, he has always been close to  her and has supported her  flourishing art career. He is her official  photographer and creator of  her illustrated catalogues.

In  addition,  the exhibition in Rome gave her the chance to meet an  important person: at the end of the event she returned to the gallery  and found out that  one of her paintings had been sold to a certain  Gastone Favero who had  left his address. Gabriella did not know that he  was the managing  director of RAI 1, whose studios were at the bottom  of the street and  who used to foster contacts with the local art  galleries. Gabriella sent him a quick note to say thank you and to wish  him Merry Christmas. He replied revealing his identity and offering  her to be introduced in the  most prestigious venues of the capital  city. But Gabriella took  advantage of this opportunity only three years  later, when she felt more  confident about her artistic skills and so  she contacted Mr Favero.  When she met him, together they organized an  event at the gallery “Paesi Nuovi” in Montecitorio where all her  paintings sold out, including her  masterpiece Il bacio di Giuda, bought  by the manager of the well-known Ferri Publishing House in Rome.

That was the time when she made the important decision to refuse any tie-ups   with art galleries in order to develop her artistic skills freely. In   fact, after the success of her last pictorial cycle she would be asked   to paint in the usual style that she felt dated because too easy for   her. Whereas, in her opinion, art should be a torment; it should   question and stimulate her till the last stroke; it should push her to   look for new techniques. So she decided to go back to her native   Abruzzo, where she was free to experiment with new techniques and at  the  same time to keep on organizing exhibitions all over Italy, such as  the  one held in 1972 in the church of San Rocco in Este near Padua.  That event was very important for the artist who was fascinated by the  new  and distinctive cultural context where art is not regarded as  elitist  but within everybody’s reach. So people from different social   backgrounds showed interest in her works of art and all the paintings   were sold.

In  1978 she spent five days in prison followed by a period  under house  arrest as she was charged with dissemination of pornography  to pupils.  Actually, she felt the moral responsibility as a teacher to  give  educational tips to her pupils who were confused about the contrast   between the sexual freedom flaunted in the 60s and the true situation   of a town where that freedom was still morally unacceptable. So, she   dealt with the controversial issue in a highly professional way, using   all the media, including magazines with nude photographs. It became a   nationwide case and many people expressed solidarity with her through   letters and even financial help. However the judicial process weighed   heavily on her, so even though she was finally found completely  innocent  and her project defined by the judges “morally relevant”,  Gabriella decided to leave teaching and once again devote herself to  art.

She went back to Ms Leda of Margutta, who introduced her to the well-known   art historian Marcello Venturoli, who guided Gabriella toward an   important turning point in her career. At first he criticized her  openly  for having a poor background; then he praised her for some  sketches  which Gabriella was reluctant to show because they were drawn  during the  years of the trial. The eminent historian affirmed that  those sketches might be the beginning of something interesting and  asked her to paint a diary about her painful experience.

Thanks  to Venturoli, Gabriella  Capodiferro resolved her distressing inner  conflict and started to paint  the cycle called “Qui si vive”, a frank  pictorial account of her experience of life. In 1980, when she showed  him her work, a touched  Venturoli said: “You make me feel reconciled  with my job as a critic.  Now you are born”. On more than one occasion  he exhibited her paintings  and since then Gabriella has been often  invited to exhibit: in 1983 the  remarkable exhibition in the popular  Astrolabio Art Gallery in Rome and  in 1988 the exhibition in the  Sant’Isaia Art Gallery in Bologna.

In   1985 Ms Leda visited her studio and she went into raptures over one of   her paintings. “You are a Gabriella Capodiferro” she said, and she   finally decided to organize an exhibition in the famous Art Gallery in   Margutta street in Rome.

In  those years her art developed from its  iconic phase into Informalism.  This new creative mode characterizes her  work today and it has made her  a well-known artist.

In  1987 she  organized painting workshops for adults in her studio in  Chieti after experiencing a project on behalf of the local council in a  disadvantaged  area of Pescara where, thanks to her, painting became an  important  pastime. The workshop, which later turned into a cultural  group, was  named MGC, “Movimento del Guardare Creativo” (Creative Watching Movement).   In the last 24 years the movement has promoted a series of cultural   events such as art exhibitions and guided tours and has caught the attention of the local media.

The  MGC’s aim is to organize art  workshops where the master passes on his knowledge without limiting the  pupils’ own artistic style. The cultural  association, then, felt a strong sense of responsibility towards the  local community to promote  such events as the show held in the National Archeological Museum “La Civitella” in Chieti.

Gabriella   has been invited to exhibit in such important international art   festivals as the 59th edition Michetti Prize, the 11th edition of Vasto   Prize, the 52nd edition of Termoli Prize and the 37th edition of  Sulmona  Prize.

Her works are kept in prestigious buildings and are included in privately-owned collections all over Italy. Furthermore they have been displayed in   important galleries in Perugia, Treviso, Bologna, Padua, Rome, Milan,   Modena and presented by eminent art critics like Piero Arcangeli,   Antonio Gasbarrini, Giuseppe Rosato, Giorgio Seveso, Leo Strozzieri and   others. Moreover she has exhibited abroad: in 1993 she held a memorable  exhibition in the art gallery Du Pommier in Nauchatel,  Switzerland and  in 1995 she took part in Malta Arts Biennale.

In  the Abruzzo Region  she has supported many arts events with the aim of  promoting the local  cultural growth: the travelling exhibition called  La mela di Eva held in  1989 and sponsored by the Abruzzo Region  administration; the solo  exhibition promoted by the Arts Museum  Foundation in the castle of  Nocciano (Pescara); the 2008 commemoration  entitled Sulle tracce di  Gabriele D’Annunzio held in the museum Casa natale di Gabriele  D’Annunzio in Pescara.

In  her life Gabriella Capodiferro has  undertaken many research projects  in the field of Art that led her to  remarkable findings, always  convinced that art is “occurrence”. So she  will never deny what  happened in her personal and artistic life and she  will be always open  to a unique evolution.