English / Italiano
“In these great solitudes Manuela Vallicelli has tamed the wind, the sky and the mountains.”
Luca Scacchi Gracco
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2025
“Sincronie“, from June 14 to July 14, 2025
Text by Manuela Vallicelli for the solo exhibition curated by Marcello Landi at Gallery Dis-ORDINE in Ravenna.
Synchronicities
Every landscape is an encounter.
An encounter between what we see and what we remember, between the present moment and ancient sensation, between a real place and an inner one. in this exhibition, the landscape is not a simple representation of the external world, but a sensiyive field where times, emotions, and memories overlap.
Synchronicities is the title that holds these layers toggether, synchronicities as harmonies, as temporal coincidences, as silent dialogues between what happens inside and outside of us. Each painting becomes a window onto a non-linear time, made of transitions, cycles, pauses, and resonances.
Painting, with its colors, its transparencies and densities, becomes a language to speak the invisible: the changing light, the silence that settles on a horizon, the echo of a place already seen, yet perhaps never visited. The landscapes, despite their apparent stillness, contain the movement of life, the wave of the wind, the vibration of the air, the slow breath of time.
Synchronicities is also an invitation to slow down the gaze. The works on display do not offer answers, but openings, spaces where each viewer is invited to rediscover their own synchronicity whit the world, whit nature, with the time that flows within.
In a era dominated by urgency and speed, Synchronicities reminds us that every landscape, every image, can become a suspended time, a place to inhabit, even if just for an instant.
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“Altrove“, From March 29 to April 26, 2025
Text for the solo exhibition, curated by Margherita Maccaferri, at BoA Spazio Arte, Bologna
Sabina Ghinassi
Art critic and curator of exhibitions and multimedia events and President of Rete Almagià.
Elsewhere
In the West, history progresses through the pursuit of the new, building and demolishing, feigning a resolute forgetfulness. In the East, by contrast, progress is made through sedimentation; the past lingers, its accumulated dust shaping what follows. The West exalts the individual, while the East embraces communities, ancestors, spirits, and shamans. Vallicelli’s painting exists on the liminal boundary between these two worldviews. She balances them, attuning them with subtle precision; she welcomes them within herself through gestures that become grave yet precious touches on liquid, luminous chromatic fields. Her work trembles, disguises itself as drama, sinks into chaos like a dissolving caress; it accelerates, then halts, oscillating between an enchanted descent into the Maelström and a flight with wings outstretched amidst cirrus and storm clouds. She paints an Elsewhere. Elsewhere is this cycle of works: landscapes both dusty and aqueous, sweeping and mesmerizing like a Siren’s song, drawing the gaze into a moment of primordial genesis, where endings and beginnings intertwine, clasp hands, and chase one another in laughter. The artist stages moments of metamorphosis between form and formlessness, tracing fragile swirls, rippled silhouettes, scratches, inlets, soft and airy matter. Sunrises and sunsets pursue one another, soaking the sky in light. Perhaps these are lands with molecular transience, fragments of luminous meteors mingling with childhood memories. Sehnsucht: a precise feeling of the world in all its elusive beauty. Here, space is both factual and hypothetical, far from ontological certainties, unstable, emulsifying, elusive. And precisely for this reason, it is unsettling and close to the sublime. It is a threshold upon which one lingers, trying not to be swallowed, maintaining a precarious balance like a brave tightrope walker, while at the same time allowing oneself to be penetrated by that meta-historical eternity that looms over all things. That nullifies all limits and asserts their nonexistence. Vallicelli follows this threshold with enveloping, vital brushstrokes; she embraces the unforeseen (or pretends to), allowing it to gather in gentle, pulsating density. She is, at once, slow and fast, disciplined and unhierarchical. She composes her symphony of possible worlds and cosmoses, of galactic shivers, of northern lights and simultaneous happenings. She embraces the absolute uncertainty of boundaries and horizons, giving form to places that resist both rational definition and functional exploitation. These places are utterly a-technological; they serve no purpose. They are unpredictable, partaking in air and immateriality, made of the same substance as dreams. At times, Vallicelli plays, scattering clues: maps collected and then forgotten, transformed into Elsewhere. A sublime Elsewhere-entanglement of lands and skies, of light and shadow, dunes, mountains, inlets, ocean waves, deserts freed from the lethargic heaviness of matter. Landscapes of psychic substance that become luminous consciousness, ascending to other dimensions. Vallicelli records her journey, and from those indecipherable pages, she offers our gaze a trace of enchanting beauty, poised to dissolve and transform, leaving a gently incandescent imprint on the heart.
Margherita Maccaferri
curator and gallerist at BoA Spazio Arte.
Manuela’s works transport us far away into a universe of vibrant colors, shards of light, and concave and convex volumes that seem ready to shift before our eyes. A world of swirling elements, like an embrace of fire, water, wind, and earth. Vallicelli’s biography tells us of a childhood spent in Nigeria: the colors, sounds, and scents of Africa resurface in her paintings through earthy tones, fiery skies, and dynamic contrasts of light and shadow. It is a world she carries within her, one that converses with the other half of her life, her return to Italy, first to Ravenna and later to Milan, where she truly begins her exhibition career. Vallicelli does not depict the nature around her; rather, she narrates the one that inhabits her from within. Observing her works, we find ourselves before inverted horizons, inside fossil-like forms, out in a space without references, beneath a sky on the verge of rupture
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Border
Artwork of the Month – May 2025, from the French association ARTIFICIALIS.
Text by Astrid Gallinat
journalist, curator, and founder of ARTIFICIALIS.
At first glance, the painting “Border” by Manuela Vallicelli could represent a landscape. There seem to be mountains at the left background, perhaps a lake or bay in front of it. In the central foreground, one might recognise dunes whose almost white sand is streaked by dark lines. Or is it rather a plateau with sedimentary depositions? Or even a snowy landscape? At the right hand, this form is abruptly interrupted by a furrow, or better by lines in grey shades, which proceed to the horizon. They might dissipate in another basin of water. Above this landscape, vaults an overcast sky. Besides clouds in blue-grey-white shades, a supernatural red is dominant. A light source is not definable, a presumed sun is hidden.
Depending on the personal experience, the contemplator might identify landscapes of their memory. One might think of a lagoon, a snowy landscape or a salt lake area? Could it even be a surface mine or something else? However, the mystic sky is irritating. Does the reddening originate after all from a sunrise or sunset? Is it a kind of an aurora? Could it be pollution and with that alarming?
All these speculations are allowable and are at the same time unreliable. Manuela creates her landscapes from her own personal souvenirs, perhaps sometimes from a certain collective memory and from her inner perception. Before working at the canvas, she has an idea what she desires to depict and how to realise it. Then she lets guide herself by her intuition. Evidently, the pictorial execution is close to abstraction, since the colour fields and lines didn’t form specific objects. Colours meet and shape the surface of the canvas. Layers and a certain depth arise from brighter and darker surfaces, which merge partly.
The result are hypothetic spaces, which might be found somewhere or have existed. Like in our example, there is no evident story told by the painting but a flaring of a remembrance. Also, the title, “Border” didn’t guide to a special reading, whereas it opens even more possibilities. The artist herself has chosen the title, because the image is for her the limit where mystery lies beyond. Therefore, Manuela’s paintings are open for various interpretations. We can contemplate the landscapes, immerse in it and let the spirit flow.
2023
Connaturale
From February 10 to March 10, 2023
Catalogue of the solo exhibition Connaturale, MonoGao Gallery.
Anna Orlando
art historian, specialist in early Genoese and Flemish painting.
Consistency of mark and gesture, not only in terms of “style”, a word as necessary in critical discourse as it is elusive and unwelcome.
Manuela Vallicelli never betrays her “manner”: from her earliest works, in the early years of this new century, a color with a clear and direct connection to the earth, blending with oil without losing its dense, texture identity, is united with the fluidity of an immediate painterly gesture. Strong and graceful at the same time. Never restrained or descriptive; never closed-off or didactic.
The image seems to emerge after the fact. Where beforehand, there is feeling.
In the image seems, Vallicelli seeks nature: both external and internal. She seeks resonances with what is most tangible and shareable, throught a familiarity with the everyday that belongs to all or to many. This is evident in the titles given to canvases that are unmistakably the offspring of a gestural form of abstraction. An evanescence (og great beauty and powerful seductiveness) that nonetheless seeks a rock to anchor itself to, a valley to flow through; a cliff to descend in a vortex; a sky in which to disperse into the wind.
From her first instinctive insights into her own language, Vallicelli has not stayed. She proceeds with coherence in exploring worlds both within and otside herself. To offer them to us, who receive them often not without discomfort, due to how deeply they touch and stir our emotions: proof of the presence of a force that, in the coherence of a distinctive and inexhaustible (though delicate) gesture, never loses its strength.
Eleonora Savorelli
independent curator and exhibition registrar, president of the Marte Association.
Everything has disappeared.
Two-tone horizons trace inner landscapes at the threshold of visibility, like impressions of a distant memory, traces of a time that perhaps never existed.
Veils glide lightly across the canvas, leaving subtle gradations. Their passing gestures paint impossible scenarios that take shape through the viewer’s gaze, observing, reflecting, imagining worlds. Manuela Vallicelli creates and destroys in a single impulse. Without any preparatory drawing, she gives life to essential landscapes, stripping them of the superfluous, of adjectives.
The artist produces visions that are scars of life, perhaps inscrutable. They are intense strokes painted in one breath: the brush never leaves the canvas, as if in apnea. Her work expresses an urgent need to bring precise sensations outward. Imagination here is the only tool to interpret these compositions.
In Vallicelli’s research, nature is the generator of everything. Suspended between realism and abstraction, her marks become industrious hives, winding paths, multifaceted clouds, gentle streams, veins of marble and wood, air currents, wind-driven dunes, bird nests, ocean waves. What remains, allowing analysis and perception, is essence, the bone structure of the landscape and of the organisms inhabiting it. Certain lines seem to use all their inner strength to prevent dispersion, while those contained within, like in Prometheus, seem to seek separation and emancipation.
Vallicelli explores her artistic language with the aim of bringing the invisible into being through the visible, the mysterious through the real. The expressiveness of her poetics conveys the substance of an impression, stripped of any identifiable trace of the surrounding environment.
Before our eyes unfold metamorphic environments in constant evolution, like the human soul.
Vallicelli’s light veils act as bridges for thought. Like the veil of Maya described by Arthur Schopenhauer, they are veils of illusion, showing humans a world that, in the philosopher’s words, is “like a dream, like the shimmering sunlight on sand mistaken from afar for water, or a rope lying on the ground taken for a snake.” At the same time, in their fluid dynamism, these veils open toward the real world, offering an infinitely extended potential for interpretation, just like the individual perceptions and experiences that allow us to discern the works.
Transient landscapes, impressed in memory as intensely as they are elusive.
Laura Facchi
writer, journalist and editor.
There are few people in the world as genuine and transparent as Manuela. I have known her for many years; we were very young when our paths first crossed in Ravenna, and at the beginning her dreamy, gentle way of being seemed to me like a construct aimed at gaining acceptance from others. I looked at that girl, stained with paint, with muscular arms and peach-like skin, with a certain strange detachment. Who are you? I wondered, as if I were facing a being from another world. She always said exactly what she thought, and most of the time her thoughts were original and hard to understand. She was comfortable being alone; she did not paint to please others, but to please herself.
The day I entered her studio for the first time, everything changed. Manuela’s language had been incomprehensible to me because, until then, I had been tuned to the wrong frequency, and her words reached me fragmented. Her paintings, the horizons of her early period, the forms of nature reshaped by her complex inner self, the unsettling and overwhelming beauty that her strong, beautiful body could create, were her true language. They completed her words; they were the right frequency through which to understand and see Manuela.
“Would you write something for my catalogue?” she asked me a few weeks ago. It was a request I accepted with both joy (it makes me proud) and fear (I know nothing about art). As I tried to imagine myself capable of speaking about forms and colours, visions and abstraction, I remembered our first meeting, the difficulty of finding harmony, that strange aura surrounding the girl who would become one of my dearest friends. Manuela is an artist, her art is herself. That dreamlike beauty I never tire of looking at is what I had missed at first encounter: it is the other half of her words.
Luca Donelli
gallerist at Monogao Gallery.
To speak about Manuela Vallicelli’s art is like getting lost in the search for the boundary between the dream world and the real one, only to discover that it does not exist.
One might place her work within the realm of the indecipherable, using as a measure the state of drowsiness, when it is unclear whether sounds, noises, and sensations arise from dreams or from a still-sleepy reality.
The abstract arrangements on the canvas, never geometric, together with the hidden logic of drawing, lead us into a form that denies order, just as happens in the moment of awakening. Sometimes it is a calm awakening; at other times it is not, and one is seized by a sense of imminent tragedy, by the movement of an unknown cosmos that becomes a mirror of our own unease.
Yet, to quote Carl Gustav Jung, it is true that when looking at certain works we perceive how the creative activity of imagination leads us into a state of fluidity, transformation, and becoming, where nothing is eternally fixed or petrified without hope.
Here, however, hope is not what we seek, it would be useless, because what remains is the sense of an indecipherable message, being pure abstraction that resists the banality of explanation or forced understanding.
What are we looking at? I would say natural elements preceded by the adverb “non”: the non-river, the non-lake, the non-water. Harmony takes shape precisely from absence, from what is not there, from what is missing.
Even light is absent, yet we perceive it, or rather, we sense its imminence, almost like a promise not yet fulfilled, for we are far from the hypocrisy of truth.
Instead, we are in a “simulated nature,” where truth and reality exclude each other, leaving space for the pure imagination of the gaze, perhaps searching for details when, in fact, it is the whole that matters. It is within the whole that the intimate and the unconfessable reside.
And yet places and times seem truly to have occurred, even though these events unfold in an imaginary dimension, distant from the essential, uninhabitable, except in an unknown elsewhere.
In a millennium marked by the difficulty of living and the necessity of speaking, this kind of art reassures us. It reminds us that only the aesthetic dimension still holds great value, if only for a moment, allowing us to forget what awaits us outside. Art can become a bunker in which to take refuge while the storm passes, leaving outside the cruelty of everyday life, or that intrusive feeling of being unable to enter the work because we are too busy trying to assign it a meaning beyond the innocent pleasure of looking.
2021
Resto del Carlino, Ravenna – April 9, 2021 (Italian newspaper)
Interview by Roberta Bezzi
A return to figuration: for Dante, it was worth it.
The 34 illustrations for the board game VianDante, created by painter Manuela Vallicelli, are exhibited in the windows of the former Bubani shop.
The 34 illustrations of the board game VianDante, following the journey of Dante Alighieri through the key stages of his life, from Piazza Santa Croce in Florence to the Basilica of San Francesco in Ravenna, were created by Ravenna based painter Manuela Vallicelli. The original panels, commissioned by Gruppo La Cassa di Ravenna and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, were exhibited in the windows of the former Bubani shop in Piazza del Popolo, Ravenna.
Vallicelli, this is your first work inspired by the Supreme Poet. How did you create the illustrations?
“Although I usually do not work on commission, I could not miss such an important opportunity. All the panels, 33 squares plus the game piece, are painted with natural powdered pigments on canvas, a technique I am deeply attached to, derived from my studies in color chemistry and restoration, and one that could have been used as early as the 14th century.”
For you, who define yourself as a painter on the threshold between abstraction and figuration, was this a return to strict figuration?
“Yes, it felt like going back in time, since I hadn’t done it for 18 years. But for Dantewho was also a great friend of Giotto, whom I love, it was worth it. This work, completed in record time during the first lockdown and through the summer, also had a cathartic effect, as it kept me from dwelling too much on the terrible moment we were experiencing with the pandemic.”
Is there one panel you feel particularly attached to?
“No, the work should be appreciated as a whole. By nature, I never become too attached to my paintings. As soon as I finish them, I move forward. It’s inevitable for someone like me, who paints every day without pause.”
Are you nostalgic, for example about Africa, where you lived for many years?
“No. With its colors, scents, and sensations, Africa is within me, and that is enough. I spent eight years in Nigeria with my parents, then traveled through many other countries. Following my mother’s example, I painted my first canvases on our veranda. But even the fog of Romagna has its own charm.”
That is certainly where your strong connection to nature originates.
“I think so. I paint with the colors of the earth the organic nature of life, where the animal and plant worlds intersect.”
What other passions do you have besides painting?
“I create video art. I participated in the latest edition of the Biennale of Contemporary Mosaic in Ravenna with the video Builders of the Past. Ravenna, premiered at the Franciscan cloisters. I am now finishing another video on Antonia Alighieri, Dante’s youngest daughter, who became Sister Beatrice. I am also influenced by theatre and scenography.”
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SettesereQui, Ravenna – April 10, 2021 (weekly print magazine)
Interview by Elena Nencini
A journey into the world of the Supreme Poet .
Behind the drawings of the game Viandante is the artist Manuela Vallicelli.
There are 33 panels (50 × 50 cm) created by the artist Manuela Vallicelli for the board game VianDante , follow the Poet’s journey, commissioned on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of the poet Dante Alighieri by Gruppo La Cassa di Ravenna (which also includes Banca di Imola Spa and Banco di Lucca e del Tirreno Spa, together with Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna).
An illustrated journey that retraces, through 97 key stages, the life and path of the great poet across the cities and places where his personal and poetic story unfolded, from Florence, his birthplace, to Ravenna, his final refuge, passing through the many locations of his exile: Bologna, Prato, Pistoia, Forlì, Lucca, the Apennines, Rimini, Imola, Bagnacavallo, Lido Adriano, Venice, and others. These places also inspired his works, especially the most famous, The Divine Comedy.
Vallicelli, a painter and video artist from Ravenna, has long focused her research on both organic and inorganic nature. Her work develops through sections, details, and micro-particles, moving within a temporal dimension between realism and abstraction.
After attending the Art High School in Ravenna, she continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, later moving to Milan. Now back in Ravenna, she is also working with video and is already planning a project on Sister Beatrice, Dante’s daughter.
Vallicelli, how did the project begin?
“The historical references and texts were curated by historian Franco Gàbici, while last January I was asked to take care of the artistic part. I usually do not create illustrative works or work on commission, but I gladly accepted because the project was about Dante, an extraordinary artist.”
How did you approach your work?
“I had complete freedom in choosing the cities, with only general guidelines. I selected all the viewpoints myself. For my artistic research, I use a technique that could have been used in the 14th century. It comes from my background in restoration: I use natural powdered pigments mixed with a binder.”
How many panels did you create?
“There are 33, plus the game piece representing Dante himself, my Dante. In total, 34. I don’t consider them paintings; it’s a different way of working.”
How did you choose the different viewpoints?
“The request was to represent recognizable places, but keeping in mind that they would ultimately be reproduced in a very small scale, that of the game. So I chose a 50 × 50 cm format and then used my own sensitivity to stylize them as much as possible.”
Is there a place you feel particularly connected to?
“I don’t usually become attached to places, but I might choose the pine forest, because I work with everything related to nature.”
What did this work represent for you?
“I began working on VianDante during the lockdown. It was a long and demanding project, and in such a tragic time for art it became an opportunity that distanced me from reality. It had a cathartic value, a true Dantean journey. I had to focus intensely on details and specifics. I experienced it differently. Even though I often work on the computer, I decided to draw everything in pencil.”
Next project?
“To stay within the world of Dante, I will soon create a video for Soroptimist International about his daughter Antonia, which will likely be screened in September in the Franciscan cloisters.”
2019
Corriere Romagna – December 8, 2019
(regional newspaper)
Interview by Barbara Gnisci
From Africa to Video: Nature Is My Source of Inspiration.
“Powerful” is the word Manuela Vallicelli associates with Africa, Nigeria in particular, the country where she spent the first 13 years of her life. “Even though my family and I lived in a western-style neighborhood, at night the sounds of drums would reach our home. White people were not well regarded in Nigeria, which at the time was an extremely dangerous place. At night, we had a guard armed with a bow and arrows. But my parents never let me live in fear. Thanks to them, I learned that fear kills the mind. My father was a petroleum engineer, and my mother was the only white woman who drove around the city alone.”
Her contact with nature, the power of color, and her passion for painting are elements that Manuela carried with her when, in 1984, she moved to Ravenna, her parents’ hometown, where she finished middle school and enrolled in the Art High School. “I had started painting in Nigeria. I remember Rain, a Texan friend, bringing us giant tubes of acrylic paint, or at least, that’s how I remember them. As a child, I loved mixing colors to create new shades. I also loved geometric shapes, although my primary source of inspiration has always been nature.”
The Years at the Academy
Later, Manuela enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts. “Those were the years when experimentation began, which continues to this day. I believe that creating an open channel with your subconscious and letting your being flow is the best way to learn about yourself. Finding your own language, however, is something else. There were times in my life when I painted up to 14 hours a day. For me, painting is a priority. A necessity.”
Today, Manuela is an established painter and video artist. “I, who had started with the figure, eventually made it transparent, to the point of losing its role as the protagonist. It became one with nature.”
Her relationship with nature continues to persist in Manuela’s works. “Later, I wanted to eliminate the horizon line as well, but I never reached a fully abstract image. A certain organic quality remains, and even when the perspective changes, the image is still recognizable. Making visible what is apparently invisible is one of the main goals of my art.”
Manuela, who works for several clients and through various agents, moved to Milan after the Academy, where she began to make a name for herself. Returning to Ravenna, she also started working with video. “I always knew that, sooner or later, I would dedicate myself to video. In Milan, I met an elderly painter and gallerist who painted works that seemed to move. I started filming his pieces, and from there a new dimension was born: video.”
The Exhibition
Manuela recently presented Builders of the Past, a 6-minute video, at the Biennale of Contemporary Mosaic in Ravenna, projected at the Franciscan Cloisters. It is an installation of video images and photos expressing a personal vision of the city. “I chose to combine the beautiful scenes of Ravenna with the sounds of the past, the distant and archaic echoes of history.”
Until January 19, five of the artist’s paintings can be seen as part of the collective exhibition Selvatico, now in its fourteenth edition. The works are displayed in the small church inside the former Testi Hospital in Cotignola. “These are very large works that represent my poetics: color, strength, organic unity. When I have an idea, I need to realize it. The result doesn’t matter. I do not intend to leave a trace of myself. I have a broader vision of the universe. What matters to me in that moment is doing it.”
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Art exhibition “Atlante dei margini, delle superfici e dei frammenti”, October 26, 2019 – January 19, 2020, Cotignola (Ravenna), curated by Massimiliano Fabbri.
Text in the exhibition catalogue
Atlas of Margins, Surfaces, and Fragments
MANUELA VALLICELLI
Painter and Video Artist
The subject of my painting research is both organic and inorganic nature. This theme includes humanity and the universe in which we live. The organic world that emerges, however, is detached from the horizon’s boundary, existing at an intersection point. It is a nature composed of sections, within rock and water, of microparticles and chasms, the microcosm and macrocosm united through a viewpoint, a visual perception magnified by a lens or from a vertical distance toward great heights. In these dimensions, I paint with Earth’s colors to express the organic nature of life, where the animal, mineral, and vegetal worlds intersect.
I use my own alphabet and a frequency with a timeless sound to mark geological movements. In my works, one steps out of the contingent temporality of the present and enters a timeless dimension, a landscape of current infinity within an evolving terrestrial mass, where I control the forms and leave nothing to chance. My painting could be described as threshold art, positioned between realism and abstraction. The images arise from spontaneous generation and conscious breathing, following a dialogue between my inner world and the external nature. It is a meeting of the inorganic and organic, of thought and nature.
2018
Interview published in INMagazine, issue n.2, May/June 2018 (local magazine)
An astounding nature.
Manuela Vallicelli is a young artist from Ravenna, Italy, active in painting, photography and video art. Her childhood in Africa is clearly visible in her works, especially in big size paintings.
By Linda Antonellini
Manuela Vallicelli is a painter of Ravenna, Italy, with an African past. When she was just two years old her family moved for work reasons to Nigeria, amid the most uncontaminated jungle. When she was thirteen she came back to Ravenna where she completed her art studies: art high school and Beaux Arts Academy. Since the year 2000 she devoted herself only to painting. Talking with her it is noticeable how her work is all one with her identity, painting is perceived as an urgency and a source of energy, an unstoppable expression of her own self. Spaces and the breath of nature are always present in her research, moving from the figurative of the first years to the latest abstraction of landscapes where the horizon disappears in the infinitely small or in the immensely wide. She has made a mural for the permanent collection of the museum Paolo Pini of Milan and her works are in private collections in Italy and abroad. She has been on view in exhibitions at galleries in Italy and abroad and in 2011 she won equal first the award Marina di Ravenna.
Having seen your works focused on nature, how important has it been for you to have been living so many years in Africa?
Surely a lot. I remember when as a child I would wait for the storm in the garden, watching the sky that became more and more black. In Africa every color, sound and smell has an astounding intensity. This force of nature which I own, has brought me to produce a series of big size paintings.
A dominant characteristic of your works is the use of natural pigments…
I think it is the best means to create colors and obtain the correct opacity and transparence I look for in each painting.
Another recurrent mean of expression is video art…
The meeting point between video art and painting has been undoubtedly photography. Video art is a natural landing of this interest I have, it is a complement to painting.
Considering this tight relation between photography and video art, do you use any images when you paint?
No, and I don’t draw from life. My approach could be defined as threshold painting, I place myself between realism and abstractionism. Images are born as an effect of a spontaneous generation, it is the product of a dialogue between my inner world and external nature, an encounter between inorganic and organic, thought and nature.
Future projects?
I am working on a personal exhibit with big size works that will be combined with video projections. I am also making an art book dedicated to Luca Scacchi Gracco with the collaboration of Franco Maria Ricci, Jean Blanchaert and the actress Greta Scacchi, daughter of Luca Scacchi.
2011
“I vincitori al MAR” – exhibition at MAR, Museum of Art of the City of Ravenna, from December 10, 2011 to January 6, 2012
Text in the exhibition catalog by Jean Blanchaert, gallerist, curator, and art critic.
God is with us even in small valleys
God is with us even in small valleys. This is the meaning of the name and surname of Manuela Vallicelli, a meaning that could have affected her painting poetics, directing her work towards humble, Franciscan proto-Christian choices. Perhaps this influenced solely her soul, which has been able to defend itself from the attacks of contemporaneity with stubborn determination, sensing that ingenuity is a secret walnut that must be kept jealously, at any cost. Especially for a painter. Protected by this name and surname, which give her foundations of semi-invulnerability, Manuela Vallicelli left on a journey of courage and creativity.
An absolute mastery of painting techniques, with the rest done by an imagination composed mainly of Africa (where she spent her childhood) and Ravenna (her city). With pigments and colours, brushes and flat paintbrushes, she takes us on her spaceship to visit the cosmos that sometimes she rediscovers in a mountain lake, very similar to planet Mars, or in the wings of a butterfly. One has the impression that Manuela Vallicelli does not fear life and its end and that she has been able to look at earthy things in the face, eye to eye, without fears. For this reason she has been able to build that spaceship on which she travels and let us travel on when we look at her paintings.
The fuel, the rocket fuel is the African breath, an infinite breath that propels the spacecraft beyond the clouds, above, inside that starry sky she had so often gazed at, as a child, in Nigeria.
“And what if all this does not exist?” The ability to overcome the fear generated by this question has made the painter-to-be daring. If the Arte Povera, the minimal art movement, showed us objects we had met a thousand times with our eyes without noticing them, the rich and sumptuos art of Ms Vallicelli is able to tell us about the Big Bang, the collision with Andromeda and the beauty of the Milky Way, proposing us these images in a language we can understand. When she returns from her very far travels in time and space, Ms Vallicelli is able to share with a brush what she saw. God is with us even in small valleys. Even in those of Saturn and the Moon.
Why do jellyfish living on ocean beds resemble galaxies? Gregorian voices and African drums bring us the answer. It is written in Chinese characters: “We are all connected, there are other worlds, and mystery does exist, but without the light of the stars, life would be dark and miserable.”
Today a painter lives in Ravenna, who knows how to represent molecular collisions, and who is able to separate the gaseous state from the liquid one on canvas. In her perspectives there are no borders; she has translated the golden tiles of the Byzantine mosaics into the sidereal ocean beds of her paintings, fourteen million light years from us.
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Golden Sail 2011: the victory of the journey
Interview by Alessandra Monti on Women in Art (online), on the occasion of the creation of seven trophies for the Women in Art festival, August 24, 2011
Manuela Vallicelli presented in preview in Ravenna the seven awards that will be given to the winners of the Italia Competitions 2011 on the evening of September 30. Iron, wood, glass, and gold are the materials chosen by the artist, with white as the dominant color, symbolizing the purity of the feminine: an idea that emphasizes the “journey” rather than the “destination.”
RAVENNA – If creating a festival is certainly a challenging task nowadays, designing and producing the trophy that represents it is no easy matter.
More often than not, it requires enormous effort: from studying the guiding principles of the event to sourcing the materials that represent it, from the often unsuccessful early attempts to the long process leading to the final form.
The major innovation of the third edition of the Women in Art Festival is undoubtedly the introduction of the Italia Competitions (there will be as many as seven), where works by artists from different backgrounds will be showcased.
On several occasions, Silvio Da Rù and Daniela Bestetti have emphasized the meaning behind the creation of the competitions, explaining the choice of the award symbol, the Golden Sail. And if every major festival is represented by its distinctive prize (Palme, Lion, Leopard, etc.), Women in Art, in keeping with its spirit, has chosen to create added value: each year entrusting a different artist (whether male or female) with the creation of the trophy.
For this first edition of the Award, the choice fell on Manuela Vallicelli, an artist from Ravenna.
We met her in recent days to talk about this work.
How did it happen that a painter ventured into sculpture?
MV: It happened very quickly. I have known Silvio and Daniela for a long time. We share a strong friendship and mutual respect. One day Silvio called me and asked if I would be interested in exclusively creating the trophies for the 2011 edition of the Festival, and I immediately accepted with enthusiasm.
Had you already worked in sculpture before?
MV: Yes, and it is an art form I love very much. Until I was 28, after finishing the Academy, I did everything: set design, photography, painting, and sculpture using reclaimed materials. Then I realized I was doing too many things, so I focused on painting. However, when the time comes, I feel I will return to photography and sculpture as well.
So creating the awards for WIA 2011 was a pleasant interlude, a kind of return to the past?
MV: In a way, yes, although it required a long and, in some respects, physically demanding process.
Did you have specific constraints, or did you work freely?
MV: I was free to interpret the philosophy of the Festival. The constraints were thematic (the sail had to be recognizable in the design) and related to the budget.
What was the central idea behind the creation?
MV: Starting from the name of the award, I examined the sail from different perspectives, focusing in particular on one of its possible forms: the triangular one.
By closely observing the triangle, I arrived at the crescent shape. My brother, who followed the making of the trophies, says that by looking carefully at the award one can recognize three of the four fundamental elements of our planet: air (the sail), water (the semicircle), and earth (the golden sphere).
I am pleased with this interpretation, even though it was not part of my conscious intention, which stopped at the semicircle as the quintessential form of the horizon…
The simple form of the award seems free from interpretative ambiguity…
MV: I tried to work on the sense of lightness, as in my paintings. I love lightness and sought to convey it through the clean, linear shape of the sail and the use of glass that defines it.
Why did you choose white as the dominant color?
MV: In our culture, white is the color of the feminine, so chromatically the central theme of the Festival envelops the symbol of the award, embracing it.
I chose to use gold sparingly, despite the name of the award, highlighting only certain details.
What was the decisive phase in the process?
MV: Shaping the materials according to the idea. Arranging the three pieces of iron, smoothing the wood, and assembling everything was also physically demanding.
Why did you decide to include the symbol of Nuova Scena Antica at the top of the sail?
MV: Once the trophy was finished, I looked at it for a long time: I felt something was missing. I made several attempts, but none were convincing. Finally, I thought of the association’s symbol, which is a stylized sail cutting through the sea. I tried inserting it and was immediately convinced: it is a sign that synthesizes and affirms a value.
The final question is more general. In your opinion, what is the difference between a sculpture and the sculptural creation of a trophy?
MV: Sculpture is the realization of a subjective idea which, through creation, seeks to become universal.
A trophy, on the other hand, immediately celebrates objective values: in our case, it expresses the wish for the winning work and its author to begin or continue their journey across the sea of uncertainty that characterizes every path in art and knowledge.
2010
“Manuela Vallicelli”, solo exhibition at Galleria 9 Colonne, Milan, from March 2 to March 23, 2010
Press release text by Luca Scacchi Gracco
Luca Scacchi Gracco
art critic, gallerist, and artist.
Manuela Vallicelli believes in wind, fire, ground and waves.
She manages to break down the sky, the ice conquers the mountain and the fire cuts into it. The world overturns from the horizon, forests and hills roll down. Beyond the scope of this reality, the horizon is the elliptical of the universe.
The layers are the sky and the sea and when they move, they roll over. Elements overlap with a dynamic from the past to the future. The river is a poem related to primordial time.
In these great solitudes Manuela Vallicelli has tamed the wind, the sky and the mountains. She possesses the elements beyond the shape, elements such as water, heat, cold, fog and time. She is not interested in perspective, the distance is given by the air she paints.
While breathing the landscape she sees the elements falling, she acts as an erupting volcano, the intermediary between the underground and the sky, between the past and the future.
Article published in “Il Giorno” (Milan), March 19, 2010, p. 6
Manuela Vallicelli presented by Luca Scacchi Gracco
The Space Spe/Il Giorno in via Tadino 30 hosts a solo exhibition of the young artist Manuela Vallicelli. Introduced by Luca Scacchi Gracco, a prominent figure in European culture, discoverer of young talents, Manuela Vallicelli, after having attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, began to exhibit in 2004 in public and private spaces. Martina Coletti writes: “this exhibition, for reasons of space, contains some small size works but the artist loves to paint on large canvases”. The world of this young artist is a world of passion, of unstoppable and fantastic events, a world she ignites with colors that only the force of nature, light and air can produce. There are waves, clouds, skies on fire, lava flows, sunsets, rain … as they were crossed by a relentless flow of events. The painting, even the smallest, is complete, it lives by its own becoming; as Luca Scacchi Gracco explains “… the overturning happens”, the world as heaven and earth is turned upside down, as sea and clouds, sun or fire. These works are not just “landscapes”, they are states of mind, emotions that vibrate strongly in the pulsing of moments captured in their becoming within imaginary spaces.
2009
Article published in the first issue of the online quarterly magazine “Nuova Scena Antica”, January 7, 2009
Laura Facchi
writer, journalist and editor.
The raw, untamed nature of Nigeria, the country where Manuela Vallicelli spent her childhood, had a profound impact on both her artistic and poetic sensibility. It is from this experience that her artistic vision originates. A sensory correspondence unfolds, opening the doors of perception to landscapes that overwhelm and enchant. At times they are visions, places enriched by the mind, where one can carve out an individual space. Here, one moves beyond the contingent temporality of the present and enters a singular dimension, where the human figure, poised on the edge of an inexhaustible emotional tension, loses its central role. It becomes part of the world, fully immersed in it, observing its own presence and gradually becoming one with time itself. This is a landscape of an ever-present infinity, within a terrestrial mass in continuous geological transformation. The sun, clouds, trees, mountains, and rivers appear as fleeting presences, subtly suggested through the interplay of color, the layering of planes, and the alternation of light and shadow, enhanced by pigments and oil glazes. There is no narrative, only evocation, thresholds and shifting boundaries between sky and earth. The field of vision expands, and place becomes a wondrous world, where wonder itself sheds its association with beauty and becomes pure astonishment.
2006
Album of Memories.
Galleria Pittura Italiana, Milan – exhibition from November 29, 2006 to January 27, 2007
Group exhibition curated by Chiara Canali
Giorgia Beltrami, Daniela Benedetti, Cristiana Depedrini, Anna Madia, Andrea Mariconti, Nicola Samorì, Manuela Vallicelli and Tiziana Vanetti.
Catalogue text by Chiara Canali
art critic, journalist, and curator of exhibitions and multimedia events and Artistic Director of Parma 360 Festival of Contemporary Creativity.
Manuela Vallicelli’s memories take shape in atmospheric landscapes that hold within them the trace of humanity’s passage across the planet, along with a sense of belonging to a greater whole, nature and cosmos. At times soft and faded, at others vibrant and effervescent, her use of color allows essential elements, human or natural, to emerge, while preserving a fluid and continuous unity in the background. Defined forms do not appear explicitly within the composition; instead, they are subtly suggested through the interplay of hues, the layering of planes, and the alternation of light and shadow, enhanced by the use of powdered pigments.
………………………………
Take Five
Galleria Obraz, Milan – exhibition from November 15 to December 22, 2006
Group exhibition curated by Loris di Falco:
Riccardo Gavazzi, Donatella Izzo, J & Peg, Koroo e Manuela Vallicelli.
Catalogue text by Chiara Canali
p. 20 of the Take Five catalogue.
Chiara Canali
art critic, journalist, and curator of exhibitions and multimedia events and Artistic Director of Parma 360 Festival of Contemporary Creativity.
Memory is an individual and psychological phenomenon but also social and collective. To remember is a way to reclaim time, both by individuals and communities. The first one was the prehistoric memory, engraved on stone and turned into history. A first archaic mode that already had in itself an artistic component, the idea that memory could be handed down through pictures. Painting has maintained and developed this memory function in the course of time, a collective memory of the human condition from dawn until today, a reminder of man’s passing on planet Earth and of its being part of a whole, nature and cosmos.
This memory is transposed in Manuela Vallicelli paintings. It’s in the manner in which she blends and spreads the colors. And in the way she lets daylight pass through the canvas. Her works lay down a landscape made of actual infinity, where the sun, clouds, trees, hills and rivers are pure accidents in a land mass that is subjected to a constant process of geological metamorphosis.
Vallicelli’s approach might even be connected to William Turner’s naturalism because of the materialization on canvas of a painting inspired by atmospheric values and a great sense of breathable mutability. As in Turner’s romantic painting, there is no narration but evocation, there is no story but surfacing of memory. The colors are soft and diaphanous, played with ocher and brown shades because more neutral tones allow the artist to bring out some essential elements while maintaining a fluid and continuous homogeneity of the background. There are no definite shapes in the composition, but with the help of powder and paint pigments they are alluded to here and there through the combination of colors, the game of plans, the succession of light and shadows. In Manuela Vallicelli’s paintings one exits the temporality of the contingent and enters a unique dimension, where different times of the past live in harmony and where “historical memory” plays a decisive role. On the edge of an endless emotional, mental and spiritual tension, Vallicelli seems to induce the viewer to delve into his “collective memory” to regain past moods or past atmospheres.
Manuela Vallicelli 