The city of Barga is known far and wide as Barga Art City – after all there are more than three dozen art exhibitions held here each and every year. Many of these exibitions are from visiting artists who bring their work to show to the public and then leave when the show finishes but there are also artists working away in studios dotted around the city.
Most of these are well known to the Barga public as they exhibit their works on a regular basis but over the past couple of years there has been a new influx of artists working in the city who are more or less unknown.
They exhibit either in galleries outside of the area or may yet to have a major show of their work.
One of these newcomers is Paola Marchi who had her first exhibition here back in 2010 (article here) and has since become a cornerstone of the Barga cultural community with recent exhibitions in Porcari and appearing as one of the founder members of the ARTCAMBARGA project which will soon be making its first public showing in August. (article here)
This afternoon she opened in the Galleria Comunale her exhibition of recent work.
Paola Marchi
Born in nearby Seravezza on the other side of the mountains towards the coast.
She says that most of the references in her work as from Dubuffet and the Art Brut school but also cites influences from Basquiat and the painters for the Transavanguardia group – the Italian Neo-Expressionist group. The term was coined by the critic Achille Oliva in his texts for an exhibition he organised in 1979 in Genanzzano titled Le Stanze. The leading Italian Transavanguardia artists were Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicolo de Maria and Mimmo Paladino.
Paola Marchi nata a Seravezza (lu) 1975.
Mi sono laureata a pisa in lettere moderne con una tesi in storia del cinema sui rapporti tra cinema e pittura.
Ho pubblicato un saggio sui rapporti tra cinema e pittura nel libro a cura di Marco grossi: “Giorni d’amore un film di G. De Santis”,Lindau 2001
Ho frequentato il corso di nudo presso l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, ho effettuato tre mostre di cui due personali a Massa e una collettiva a Pietrasanta.
Il mio punto di riferimento per la ricerca artistica sono l’Art Brut (Dubuffet), Basquiat e i pittori della transavanguardia e in genere tutte quelle forme di espressione artistica spontanee e di matrice apparentemente elementare.