We first saw Anna Laurini's work--her woman, here, in two pasteups--on a phone booth on via Tiburtina in San Lorenzo, just a stone's throw from where the great consular road begins. A stylized woman's face, with a musical score as background.
In the days and weeks ahead, as we walked the San Lorenzo neighborhood, well known for its radical, working-class, and student politics, its tolerance of any kind of graffiti or wall art, and its suffering from the 1944 American bombing, we saw more Laurinis, variations on the theme--some pasteups, some modest-size wall paintings, apparently accomplished some time ago. In one variation, the lips were not red, and the background was not a music score:
In another, older and painted, the lipstick conforms to the mouth, the eye is blue (and the pupil more pronounced), and the background is even-older wall graffiti:
This one seemed to be merging two, or three, faces. And the eyes (and hair) were purple.
One pasteup was in black and white, another was colored only in orange. Below, Laurini apparently used existing graffiti for the lip color. You can see there's a lot of competition for attention on San Lorenzo's walls.
One painting was "framed," by the blue hair of two women facing each other.
And this one, in pink and black, with the color of the pink lips "contained" but also emphasized by the surrounding pink, used drips to dramatic effect.
We couldn't resist the opening and vernissage, an event that was the norm pre-covid and now is much less common. It took place at the Proloco gallery at via Dei Latini 52, in San Lorenzo. We were immediately offered a glass of wine and joined the crowd, inside and outside the gallery (as is the custom--see photos at the end of this post).
Usually we introduce ourselves to the artist, but this time we did not. We are quite sure she is the 2nd from the left in this photo:
And that this is her mother, shooting a video:
A gallery flyer described Laurini as well known in the underground circuits of London, Paris, and Lisbon. It described Laurini's work as merging the "sophisticated" and the "simpler," and her style as both "rapid" and urban, "almost like an ideogram of the soul and identity." Her work "invites the viewer to reflect on the multiple identities that mix in the great cities." "The enigmatic faces painted by Anna Laurini act as mirrors of the soul, asking observers to look inside themselves to confront their own essence."
I (Bill) was intrigued by the work, as this post reveals. I think I was taken by its simplicity of color and form, by the ways in which the basic model could be differentiated, and by what I saw as the presence of Pablo Picasso, here employed by an artist generations removed. I don't think it helped me look inside myself in search of my essence, but that would have been a lot to ask.
Bill
Buon vernissage!
