biography

Emanuela de Franceschi, since childhood, reveals a soul full of poetry. Born in Rome in a building in the city center, near the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore, from the balcony overlooking the courtyard, she observes with eyes full of wonder a square of sky where at springtime thousands of swallows dart. The flight paths of the birds, the screeches, the sound of the bells that mark the passinghours remain impressed in her mind, to which they still come back. The family atmosphere reverberates in the voices of the neighborhood, of which the artist child penetrates the details with a keen eye, enriching her imagination. The books are her faithful travel companions, that offer to take her to another world full of beauty: the volume of art history conquers her with images full of charm. At twelve years, her mother, employed at the Physics department of the La Sapienza University of Rome, gave her a box of oil paints and a canvas. She immediately feels the need to visually translate what every day from the balcony fascinates her with its own sounds and colors: she paints a view of the panorama below, enriching it with a horse carriage to balance a too deserted road. At fifteen, while on vacation with her parents at a beach in Puglia, a large moon over the sea hits her attention: she makes a quick sketch on some sheets, then at home she paints a suggestive night. Her father, fascinated, decides to frame it. On the way back home, after having withdrawn the picture from the framer, passing in front of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Via Nazionale, the young artist realizes that the VII international student art exhibition is underway and that is the last day useful to participate. She instinctively decides to sign up, hands over the picture and inadvertently forget it. After fifteen days, remembering the end date of the exhibition, she returns to its location to take back her painting and discovers, with immense joy and amazement, that she has won a silver

In the following months, invitations are sent to her by Fabio Sargentini, who would like to host her in her gallery, "L’Attico", in Piazza di Spagna, but she declines because the family does not approve of frequent visits to the artistic environment that would have distracted her. from her studies: only many years later she will realize the importance of the invitation received: only many years later she will appreciate the importance of the invitation received. She continued her pictorial studies independently, after achieving the high school diploma and graduating in humanities, deepening her passion for art as a secret garden. She sells a first painting in 1976, to a seamstress, who in return makes her a dress. For a few years she attended the studio of the master Melchiorre Melis, Sardinian artist, former painting teacher in Cairo, who continued his pictorial poetry in his atelier located close to Piazza di Siena. Through him Emanuela gets to know the daughters of Balla, Luce and Elica, and in their home she will see the figurative works of their father and will direct her taste towards a figuration of quality . In the following years, in parallel with her own personal life and professional training, she continued her in-depth study of artistic techniques: for many years she attended the atelier of the master Silvio Bicchi, the Free School of Nude of the Roman Academy of Figurative Arts, the Roman School of Comics. She participates in impromptu painting competitions and in various group exhibitions, including that in Rome at the Ex Mattatoio and in Tivoli, at the Scuderie Estensi. For a long period her work describes people, animals, figures, still lifes. In 2012,she takes a pause that pushes her to reconsider the nature of her artistic path. Thus began in 2013 the series of "Interferences" which elaborates the decomposition of the images and then, in the series "The Echoes",their recomposition. Her research continues with "The past seasons" in which Igor Mitoraji's sculpture leads her to question the relationship between man and classical culture. In the most recent series, called "Plastic contaminations", classicism meets the contemporary, in a conscious and refined re-enactment of a lost past. In 2018 she was awarded the 1st prize of the Viterbo Biennale, curated by Laura Lucibello, for the Emerging Artists category. The appreciation of this new path also comes from critics, including Giovanni Faccenda, and Giammarco Puntelli, who will take care of her solo exhibitions, in 2018 in Anghiari in the town hall: "Eternal Intelligences", in 2019 in Berlin, at the Lacke & Farben gallery: "Plastic Contamination" at the inauguration of which the Italian Ambassador Luigi Mattiolo has participated and in August 2020, in Ventimiglia, at the MAR, in the Fortezza dell'Annunziata: "Paths of the mind and soul". Also in 2020 is held in Formia the solo exhibition " Formia Contemporanea, Mediterraneo: “The Evolution of Myth" sponsored by the Municipality and the Lazio Region, curated by Claudio Strinati and Mariagrazia Londrino. In 2020 she publishes her Monograph edited by Francesca Bogliolo, with the Edizioni Giorgio Mondadori. In recent years she has exhibited her paintings in Rome, Bari, Assisi, La Spezia, Palermo, Naples, Montecatini, Milan, Genoa, Monreale, Gubbio, Ventimiglia, London, Dubrovnik, Berlin, Tirana, Plovdiv, Kavarna, Aswan. Her will is to return fragments of that beauty she sees everywhere around her.Aware that there is no goal, but the goal is the journey itself, she continues to investigate reality through a deep and delicate feeling.