events

Exhibition at the Arkè Art Gallery
Venice, 26 April – 8 June 2024

The Arkè art gallery in San Samuele, Venice, hosted an exhibition entitled ‘Elena Guaccero between fantasy and creativity’ for the second time (the first time was in the autumn of 2012). The exhibition was held to celebrate what would have been Elena’s 100th birthday.

There are some touching comments in the visitors’ book. Here is a small selection (unfortunately not all the signatures are legible).

One hundred years old but she doesn’t show it! Art is always young. If it is beautiful!

Best wishes for Elena’s 100 years, a simply fantastic artist mother!
Giustina and Filippo

An exhibition to be discovered in all its possible transformations. Beautiful!
Annalisa Sacerdoti

An enchanted world… wonder!

Merci beaucoup! C’est le miroir de l’essence vitale!

So happy to find this wonderful, joyful works of art. I read somewhere that sketching is like a song in the bath, free and playful. This is even more: thought out, mathematical, but still full of joy and colour. Thank you!
Lot

I found many memories of my childhood here. I am thrilled.
Alessandra Tedesco

Un prazer estar neste lugar tão lindo, e encontrar este trabalho tão delicado e potente. Conhecer Giovanna foi una alegria a mais.
Juliana Saude Barreto (Brasil)

Thank you, Elena, for a few minutes I became a child again… but I see with an adult’s eyes and understand the creative genius.
P. Dalmartello

An original woman! She has moved with the times, transforming even common materials into fascinating mobile toys. Thank you
Andrea Braun

Un havre de creativité et de fraicheur entouré d’une Biennale mauvaise et depressante.
Ludovic

A wonderful memory of Elena! Bravo Anna Maria for keeping her spirit alive.
Julia

Beautiful surprise to see here so good and original artist. Thank you for this Gallery!
Margareth (Hamburgh) and Elisabeth (Polen)

Creativity, harmony, playfulness, balance, beauty… Thank you!

Donation of the digital archive of architect Elena Guaccero
Bari, 13 April 2023

President Mimmo Mastronardi and Councillor Danilo Stefanelli welcomed Anna Maria Rocca to the offices of the Bari Institute of Architects for the official signing of the deed of donation of the digital archive of Architect Elena Guaccero (Bari 1924 – Venice 2006). Guaccero designed the RAI headquarters in via Dalmazia which was completed in 1959. This building, referred to at the time of its inauguration as ‘The building of 100 windows’, is still one of the clearest examples of modern architecture of the 1950s in Apulia, and is tangible evidence of the new approach to spatial organisation for the modern radio-television ‘machine’; it was rightly included in the recent MIC census of Italian Architecture from 1945 to the present day.

The event began with participants sharing their memories, allowing us to get to know the more human and private side of Elena Guaccero who chose to be an architect at a time when it was not easy to make her way in the southern Italy, a world dominated by men (as is evident in the construction site photo in which Elena is the only woman next to Engineer Alfonso Chiaia who supervised the construction of the RAI building). This is another reason why the material in Elena Guaccero’s private archive is valuable to the Bari Institute of Architects, which, as it did with Marino Lopopolo, will preserve it in order to activate institutional paths of cataloguing, study, research and dissemination to the new generations to preserve the memory of an important post-war figure together with Vittorio Chiaia, Massimo Napolitano, Onofrio Mangini, Vito Sangirardi, Tonino Cirielli and others. Guaccero knew how to cultivate her passion even when, having first moved abroad and then to Venice, she decided to devote herself to creating two-dimensional and three-dimensional artworks, evidence of a versatility and talent that was always capable of reinventing itself.

Gagliano del Capo, August 2013

Le creature di Elena Guaccero (Elena Guaccero’s Creatures), is the title of the exhibition curated by Ada Martelli and organized by the Association Via Vai nello storico Palazzo Comi a Gagliano del Capo (LE). Thanks to this initiative, the artist has returned to Puglia by means of her works: paintings, collages and a selection of pupazzi: her fantastic, brightly painted, 3D wooden figures. The exhibition also includes an installation featuring the video Squaring the Circle, Guaccero’s playful solution to one of the most well-known problems of Greek geometry.

Backstage

Venice, October – December 2012

The Arkè Art Gallery, in San Samuele, hosted an exhibition of works by Elena Guaccero entitled Art Is a Game and Games Have Their Own Rules. It was the first time Guaccero’s work were displayed at a public exhibition (during her lifetime, she only showed her works in a family context, as if her creative and manual work were nothing more than a game). After research into the artist’s archive carried out by her eldest daughter Anna Maria Rocca, this small public exhibition was organised. It features some of the Guaccero’s most significant pieces that summarize the painstaking work carried out during the last 30 years of her life.

All her works, from collages to wooden puppets, are entirely made by hand, with the use of the simplest tools, paper and cardboard, glue, scissors, pencil, saw, colors and brush.

“…with infinite patience and precision, Elena Guaccero designs and makes her pupazzi and other objects with the aim of stimulating our imagination. They bring us back, albeit briefly, into a dimension of play that we thought was hopelessly lost, but that perhaps was only hidden in the depths of our being.” Giovanni Bianchi

Venice, April 2011

A series of initiatives for children around the theme of chemistry entitled Giocosamente Chimica was held during the Reading Month organised by the Barchetta Blu association. One of these – an exhibition of works by Elena Guaccero that were inspired by the incredible and innumerable geometric shapes present in chemistry – was held at the Serra dei Giardini.