SOFIA CACCIAPAGLIA ART
Sofia
Cacciapaglia
Her female figures emerge from a dream world and inhabit an enchanted dimension. They are monumental but also light and ethereal. They hold each other through contact and gazes, through silent dialogues which are the base of the compositional balance. They are symbols of a primordial woman. They are suspended.
Sofia Cacciapaglia is one of my favourite artists. There is a quality in her work that I find impossible to fully explain and impossible to ignore — the women in her paintings seem to exist in a place that is both deeply ancient and completely present. I am truly in love with this work.
"For me art is primarily about a sacred sense of life."
What are your greatest inspirations or influences?
I'm very tied to Italy, where I'm based and have my studio. I definitely get a lot of my inspiration from here. I think it's a unique atmosphere that cannot be found anywhere else. I feel my work is profoundly Italian — the lines of the figures, the temperature of the colours, and the atmospheres that I want to recreate in the works. The faces of my women often have very proud expressions and at the same time they are melancholic, like this country.
I very much love the great Italian artists, both near and far in time, who have inspired me over the years and have become like companions on this journey.
Tell us about your new exhibition.
The exhibition is in the council of Fortunago, a very pretty ancient village near Pavia. It is curated by the painter Pino Jelo, who has been a great teacher for me over the years. The title is Suspended — a title that specifically refers to the works on display. For the exhibition I have selected ten large paintings.
The figures in my work seem to emerge from a dream world, suspended in time and space. The focus of my research is the female figure, which appear to hold each other up, help each other. The connecting thread is human contact and the weaving of bodies like silent and secret conversations.
My work definitely starts with me, even if the subject is a flower or the female form. For me it has to be intimate and convey self-observation. It's symbolic and doesn't recall much reality. It's not at all conceptual — it doesn't start with an idea as such but comes from nowhere. It's purely instinctive and emotional. For me art is primarily about a sacred sense of life.
A very pretty ancient village council in the hills near Pavia. Pino Jelo — "a great teacher for me over the years" — curated the show. The title refers specifically to the works: figures that emerge from a dream world, suspended in time and space, linked through human contact and the silent weaving of bodies.
What is the most interesting response to your work so far?
In a world where everything is "visible," the "invisible" captures the feeling more than the eye. I get very happy to hear when people have felt something. In this time when contemporary art is and can be anything.
"In a world where everything is 'visible,' the 'invisible' captures the feeling more than the eye. I get very happy to hear when people have felt something."
What are your materials?
Apart from canvas, my favourite materials are simple ones such as cardboard and wrapping paper, because of their material structure and their neutral background colour, which gives the work a poetic vibration. In 2019 I completed Locus Amoenus, my first large 360° installation that covered the walls of my studio with discarded cardboard boxes, which I transformed into a blossoming garden from floor to ceiling. This work brings an environmental message: giving the salvaged material a second life through the representation of nature and the rebirth of spring.
What would be a dream project for you?
I would like to make a new series of work using ceramics. I think that white ceramics could be a perfect material for my subjects. And I'd like to have studios in different locations so that I could work from different places — such as M'hamid, a small town that is one of the gates to the Sahara Desert. Or on a volcanic island like Stromboli in Sicily. Or Mexico City — seeing as people often see a connection between my work and Mexico.
A sofa designed and exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The female figure translated into the language of furniture design, the painting becoming a three-dimensional object.
Her painting language extended into surface and repetition. The suspended figures inhabiting the walls of a room rather than a canvas on a wall — a different kind of immersion.
An entire fashion collection dedicated to her work by the designer Caterina Gatta. She believes an artist today needs to be open to these collaborations, not afraid to bring their work into other worlds.
A perfect material for her subjects. Simple, pure, and entirely itself.
One of the final towns before the desert begins. The light, the silence, the scale.
A working volcano in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The earth visibly alive.
Viewers consistently find affinities between her work and Mexico. She would like to find out why firsthand.
What it means when a painter says the work comes from nowhere
Sofia Cacciapaglia was born into a family where art was already present — her father a classical composer, the decision to paint something that came naturally and was always supported. She trained at the Brera, which is not simply a qualification but a lineage: an unbroken thread back to the way Italian painting has understood the female figure since Piero della Francesca placed women in pale stone landscapes and gave them expressions that were proud and melancholic simultaneously.
When she says the work is not conceptual, does not start with an idea, comes from nowhere, is purely instinctive and emotional — she is describing something that requires a lifetime of looking to achieve. The work that appears to arrive spontaneously is the work made possible by the deepest internalisation of a tradition. You have to know Botticelli before you can paint as if you do not. You have to have stood in front of every painting in Italy before you can make the suspended woman your own.
Visit her work at sofiacacciapaglia.com and follow her at @sofiacacciapaglia.
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