The Italian Cultural Institute in Brussels opens an all-female exhibition on 21 September. With the exhibition “Una citta’, quattro regine (One city, four queens)”, the artist Carla Chiusano returns to Brussels with four large-format triptychs to tell the stories of four extraordinary women whose lives are intertwined with the history of the city of Ravenna.
These are the empresses Galla Placidia and Amalasunta, juxtaposed with two romantic heroines such as Francesca da Rimini, portrayed by Dante in the fifth canto of the Inferno with her lover Paolo, and Teresa Gamba Guiccioli, Lord Byron’s lover and author of “Vie de Lord Byron en Italie“, a biography in French about the man she had deeply loved.
The hyper-realistic oil paintings, depicting the queens with incredible precision of detail, are counterpointed by the lightness and irony of the “vignettes”, a form of narration through images that has always accompanied the artistic production of Carla Chiusano. Rich in irony and historical details, the cartoons create unpredictable relationships between characters from the past and modern visitors, wringing a smile and inviting the public to take a closer look and involving them in a new way of enjoying the work of art.
Carla Chiusano, born in 1964 in Turin, lives and works in Milan. Director Mimmo Calopresti dedicated the docu-film Conversazioni sull’arte di Carla to her, while in 2020 Mondadori published the book “Carla Chiusano. Dipingere con il cuore ed il sorriso (Carla Chiusano. Painting with heart and smile’).
For more information about the exhibition, click here
