This one-day international symposium considers Rome as a transnational contact zone for abstract women artists in the decades following the Second World War, from the 1950s through the 1970s. These artists stayed for various periods of time, ‘crossing over’ from the UK and the US, but also from Brazil, Turkey, Iran, and other countries around the world. What drew them to Rome and how did their stay there affect their work? Taking into consideration individual artistic trajectories, as well as the geopolitical circumstances framing artistic production in Italy of the time, the speakers at the symposium reflect on such questions in view of the simultaneous trend among the Rome-based Italian abstract women artists to live and work abroad.
9.30 Arrivals
10.00 Opening remarks
10 – 11.30 Panel 1
Sandra Blow: Performed Materialism | Jennifer Johnson (Oxford)
In-betweenness of Transcultural Reflection in Tess Jaray’s Abstract Art | Yu Xiao (RCA)
When kinetic abstraction becomes plastic: Lia Drei’s research in the late 1960s in Rome | Caterina Molteni (MAMBo)
Lauretta Vinciarelli: Artistic Reflections between Rome and New York | Francesca Romana Forlini (New York Institute of Technology)
11.30 Coffee Break
11.50 – 13 Panel 2
Negotiating Cultural and Artistic Identities in 1960s Rome: Mary Shaffer and Edith Schloss | Roberta Minnucci (Hertziana)
Revisiting Marcia Hafif’s 1975 exhibition in Rome | Maria Alicata (Sapienza)
Un’artista americana a Roma: Adele Plotkin | Giusy Petruzzelli (Accademia di Belle Arti di Bari) – This lecture will take place in Italian
13:00 Lunch
14.15 – 15.30 Panel 3
Rosemary’s Mayer’s Passages | Amy Tobin (Cambridge)
Claire Falkenstein in Postwar Rome | Peter Benson Miller (Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio)
«When everything began». Il primo soggiorno di Barbara Chase-Riboud a Roma (1957-1958) | Biancalucia Maglione (Siena) – This lecture will take place in Italian
15.30 Coffee Break
15.50 – 17.00 Panel 4
Behjat Sadr: An Iranian in Rome | Pia Gottschaller (Courtauld)
Abstract art in transit: immigrant artist Maria Bonomi between Brazil and Italy in the 1950s | Ana Avelar (Brasilia) and Renata Rocco (Palácio do Governo do Estado de São Paulo)
Gencay’s Italian Chapter: A Passage of Becoming | Ahu Antmen (Sabancı)
18 – 19.30 Keynote Lecture
Carla Accardi and the Moroccan art scene: 1972-1975 | Maud Houssais
See the full programme with the abstracts here.
The symposium is organised by Dr Jelena Stojković, Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory at the School of Arts, Oxford Brookes University, and is supported by the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship as part of her research project Illumination: Transnational Routes of Abstract Art in the Cold War. It is organised in partnership with the British School at Rome and will accompany a retrospective exhibition of Carmengloria Morales at the BSR, curated by Dr Daniel Sturgis, Professor in Painting at the University of the Arts London and Chair of the Faculty of Fine Art at the BSR. The event takes place in person at the BSR Lecture Theatre, it is free of charge and streamed online. It is delivered bilingually, in English and Italian, and English translation will be made available for presentations in Italian on the day. Keynote presentation will be recorded and uploaded to BSR’s YouTube channel after the event.
The symposium will be accessible in person and online, registering at the link above.
* The organisers awarded a bursary for a young Italian art historian to Sonia Chianchiano, enabling her to attend the symposium.
