Feminine art. Since the Renaissance to the Twentieth century the contribution of feminine art has been great, although basically in the shadows. Nevertheless between the Sixteenth and the Twentieth century, many women have produced such masterpieces worthy of the greatest names of the Western art movements. This exhibition aims to pay tribute to those female artists who have kept painting over the centuries showing their sensibility and talent, while often remaining far from official academies. “The F factor. Femininity, frailty, force” is a group exhibit collecting the work of five female artists: Marie-Claire Guyot, Cristina Martella, Nabila, Franca Settembrini, Annamaria Tosini. A dialogue between different styles arising from the creativity of different artists by age, social status, nationality.Female art therefore. A parity reached? Does a woman have to be naked to enter a museum? – in the late 1980s the Guerrilla girls denounced in New York. Even today the market does not do justice to the “other half of the avant-garde”. Despite the hot protest moment for gender inequality, this is not a show against, but an exhibition for. To give visibility to women’s path, intensely lived and expressed here from an artistic point of view. Because if it is true that art has no gender, it is neither masculine nor feminine, it is equally true that the woman’s universe seems to have the capacity to “decline” the artistic experience according to one’s own modalities and inspirations: attentive to the interior and daily dimension, to the intimacy of the poetic expression, to the claim of an entity able to manifest itself in full autonomy. An artistic experience that passes through the ability to explore one’s own soul to discover its fragility, its dark sides and transform it through the cathartic power of art into strong, wise creations. Without fear anymore.

Marie-Claire Guyot (Paris 1937-Milan 1991) shows off her obsessive introspection. She is always the subject of her works, an imaginary universe where childhood, motherhood and religion transfigure on the paintings. The works of Cristina Martella (Atri, Teramo) are the result of a fantasy and a living imagination: they are explosions of nature, flowers, flying insects, both fantastic and real: “I paint what I see”. And again the caffeomantical visions of the Egyptian Nabila (Cairo 1945): a multitude of figures interlocked. The colorful female universe of Franca Settembrini (Florence 1947-2003) is populated by little girls, young people of light music, women with thick hair, penetrating eyes, hands with long and sharp fingers. To close with the salvific memories of Annamaria Tosini (Palermo 1930-2013) immortalized in her fragile sculptures of recycled paper made in the last years of her life.