1- Day of Liberation from Nazi-Fascism, April 25, 2018, Rome. During the Second World War Goliarda Sapienza joined the Resistance and participated in the liberation from Regina Coeli prison of Sandro Pertini and Giuseppe Saragat.
2- Interior of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinema in Rome, where Goliarda taught in the last years of her life.
Goliarda Sapienza is today recognized as one of the most important Italian authors, but during her life she has long been opposed and rejected by the political and literary environment. At her death in 1996, not even a page of her work was in bookstores. Two years later, her husband Angelo Pellegrino decided to publish L’Arte della Gioia at his own expense, whose manuscript lay in a chest after numerous editorial refusals.Thus the vital circuit that led to the publication of the book in France in 2005 was activated, where it was acclaimed as one of the European masterpieces of the twentieth century. In 2008 Einaudi began to publish his entire work also in Italy.
Brothers and friends of Sapienza in 1927 on the Playa beach in Catania, Goliarda is the 3-year-old girl on the right. A man is colored in red pencil by a childish hand, no one knows why. © Sapienza Pellegrino Archive
The Red Man project is an investigation into the imagery of Goliarda Sapienza.
Partisan, anarchist and forerunner of gender issues, prepared by the family for the heroism of times of war and much less at ease in the long post-Christian Democratic post-war period, Sapienza knew the psychiatric hospital and the electroshock and later the jail for a jewelry theft. Through the images, starting from a re-reading of the texts and from the deepening of the places and the stories related to her, the project aims to renew and enrich the hypotheses around her work and show her profile in a different light. Thanks to the meeting with Angelo Pellegrino, husband of Sapienza, I was able to access the manuscripts and archives of the family and give shape to the historical framework of the project.
Italy, 2017 / Ongoing.
1- The stairs of the family house of Goliarda, in via Pistone 20 in Catania.
2- Agave leaf in the Villa Bellini, Catania.
2- Agave leaf in the Villa Bellini, Catania.
1- Isola Lachea, birthplace of volcano Etna, Aci Trezza, Catania2-
Pupo in the atelier of the puppeteers Fratelli Napoli in Catania.
Detail of the hands of the Sarcophagus of the Bride and Groom, Etruscan Museum of Vila Giulia, Rome.
1- Carriage for the procession of Sant’Agata, Catania.
2- One of the masterpieces of Rococo in Sicily, the spiral staircase of Palazzo Biscari in Catania.
1- The railway passes among the lava on the slopes of the volcano Etna, Catania.
2- Skeleton of a horse in the Museum of Natural History of Catania.
1- A manuscript by Goliarda Sapienza.
2- Detail of an image of Goliarda Sapienza taken by Angelo Pellegrino.
Exhibition Looking On - Sguardi e prospettive sulla nuova fotografia italiana A project by Osservatorio Fotografico, curated by Chiara Bardelli Nonino, Federica Chiocchetti, Silvia Loddo, Elisa Medde, Giulia Ticozzi, Giulia Zorzi - MAR Ravenna, 2019