Elisa Montessori


Elisa Montessori is an Italian painter.

Biography

Montessori was born in Genoa on 18 June 1931. She has been living and working in Trastevere in Rome since the mid-1950s, where she owns a studio.
She has been interested in drawing since childhood. She studied classical subjects and graduated with a humanities degree in 1953 from La Sapienza University in Rome. After graduation, she was trained at Mirko Basaldella's studio where she met with the Gruppo Origine: Ettore Colla, Alberto Burri, and Giuseppe Capogrossi. With Basaldella she started experimenting with techniques such as egg tempera, ceramics, goldworking and engraving.
In 1955 Montessori won a student grant to go to Paris, but decided to stay in Rome after her meeting with scientist Mario Tchou, who became her husband the same year. Montessori and Tchou moved to Milan and had two daughters. Their house in Milan on Via Cappuccio was designed by the architect Ettore Sottsass. Sotsass and Tchou were friends through their involvement on the Olivetti Elea project. Following the sudden death of Tchou in a car accident while on his way to Olivetti's headquarters in Ivrea in 1961, Montessori relocated to Rome. She would later remarry with Costantino Dardi, an architect, and had a third daughter.

Work

Montessori's work is multifaceted, using many different techniques. Asian culture was a strong source of inspiration, for example in the series of her notebooks and exhibition at Galleria Giulia in 2011.
One important aspect of her production starting from the 1980s was the role of the illustration and the relationship between image and text in both poetry and literature. She produced works inspired by the work of Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Patrizia Valduga, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Ingeborg Bachmann and Laura Lilli.

Works in museums

Her works are part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO), the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, and the Farnesina Palace in Rome. Since 2010, a portrait representing the fragmentation of her body is part of the collection at the Uffizi in Florence,

Acknowledgements

  • Premio Internazionale "Leonardo Paterna Baldizzi"
  • In 2004 filmmaker Francesco Vaccaro made a documentary about her work.

Selected exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Frauen in der Kunst, Orangerie of Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin

Solo exhibitions

Duetto organized for the realization of the folder Dietro l’albero di Seghers. A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, Rome. Curated by Francesco Moschini.