PRECORRERE I TEMPI

Artespressione Gallery presents the exhibition Adriana Bisi Fabbri. Precorrere i tempi, curated by Matteo Pacini, with text by Luigi Sansone, dedicated to the great painter, illustrator, caricaturist of the last century and highlights her complexity, irony and eclecticism. With this exhibition with an important artistic and cultural profile, Paula Nora Seegy's Milan gallery carries out and in-depth research on some artistic currents between the 19th and 20th centuries, kicking off a series of events dedicated to some outstanding personalities who, for different reasons, are little known to the general public.

From March 2 to April 1, 2023, one can admire precious works on paper of medium and small format that highlight the poetics of Adriana Bisi Fabbri centered on portraits, curious self-portraits, caricatures, sketches, posters and fashion figurines. The works recount the artistic career of a woman who was ahead of her time and masterfully captured moods and feelings, which highlight her being a forerunner of a new way of experiencing femininity. "This exhibition," says Matteo Pacini, "represents an opportunity to give back to the figure of a great artist of the twentieth century, not sufficiently remembered in time, the light she deserves due to the complexity of her work, the irony and eclecticism of a wide and brilliant production that has come to the present day with a fame that is certainly less than it should be. The protagonist of a troubled life, Adriana Bisi Fabbri made her way in a male-dominated era, and thanks to her innate talent as well as a refined intelligence, today she represents the model of a free, independent woman capable of changing her destiny.

The exhibition brings to light the multifaceted production of an artist who has left us a multitude of intimate, "delicate and familiar" works, as Luigi Sansone notes, in which "her strong bond with her family is a constant source of inspiration for portraying her husband and sons Marco and Riccardo in a variety of attitudes as in the drawings Giannetto Bisi and Adriana while reading, c. 1906, Giannetto Bisi while reading, c. 1906, in which she captures the most psychologically intense and typical expressions of their living." In addition to this kind of works in the exhibition one can admire sought-after models for fashionable clothes such as Studio per abito of 1911, but Her fertile creativity and passion for experimentation led her to be the protagonist of different expressive choices, in fact in the exhibition there are suggestive works in oil, pastel, tempera, watercolor, pencil, Indian ink, sanguine and mixed media that consecrated her among the exponents of the movement of the "daring ones." Always open to modernity and novelty, she sensed and interpreted in advance the languages of the movements that animated Italian art, from Divisionism to Futurism and in Europe Secession and Expressionism. also pungent caricatures such as L'alpino or Il dio dei tedeschi as well as deep and enigmatic portraits and self-portraits that, thanks to the refined stroke and the skillful chiaroscuro make faces emerge from the paper with a surprising expressive force.

Adriana Bisi Fabbri (1881-1918) was born in Ferrara, where she attended the school of painter Nicola Laurenti and met her future husband and journalist Giannetto Bisi. She moved to Padua, the guest of her aunt Cecilia Forlani, Umberto Boccioni's mother; later to Milan, where she completed painting studies and enriched her training as a self-taught artist by attending the studios of Gaetano Previati and Luigi Conconi. In 1908 he made his debut with two drawings at the Second Quadrennial Exhibition in Turin. In 1911 she participated in the International Humor Exhibition organized at the Castello di Rivoli and was awarded a bronze medal; in the same year she was invited to the First Exhibition of Free Art organized in Milan by Umberto Boccioni with other Futurists and inaugurated in Rome her first solo exhibition in the halls of the Lyceum of Palazzo Torlonia. During his stay in the capital he met Futurists Luciano Folgore and Giacomo Balla. In 1913 Adriana Bisi Fabbri participated in the Bergamo Humorous Art Exhibition, for which she designed the postcard and large poster. In 1914, at the invitation of Leonardo Dudreville, she joined and exhibited with the group Nuove Tendenze. During World War I many of his politically motivated drawings were published in the newspaper "Il Popolo d'Italia"; he also collaborated with "La Domenica Illustrata" and executed figurines for the fashion house founded by Domenico Ventura. In 1918, due to health issues, he moved to Travedona, Varese, with his friend Teresa Tallone Somarè, daughter of the well-known painter Cesare Tallone, but his condition worsened and on May 29, 1918, he died, leaving a significant artistic and cultural legacy. ARTESPRESSION was born in May 2009 from an idea of Paula Nora Seegy with the aim of fostering interaction and synergies of different artistic expressions in an exhibition space designed to host exhibitions and events in the heart of "old Milan."

The gallery is developed in three exhibition spaces on the second floor of an elegant building in Via della Palla 3, a side street of the central Via Torino in the heart of Milan, adjacent to the historic Piazza Sant'Alessandro. Artespressione follows an autonomous line-without being representative of any particular current-is focused on an exhibition program with an international flavor, curated by Matteo Pacini, with a careful and equally distributed look at painting, sculpture and photography, organizes solo and group exhibitions, both in the gallery and at other spaces, and participates in festivals, events and art fairs in Italy and abroad with success.