LUCIANELLA CAFAGNA

Lucianella Cafagna was born in Rome in 1968. She studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and subsequently spent a period training in the studio of Pierre Carron, a protégé of Balthus. In 2011, Cafagna took part in the 54th Venice International Art Biennale with a life-size work exhibited in the Italian Pavilion, while in 2019, Rome’s prestigious museum Palazzo Merulana held a retrospective of her work. In November-December 2022, the same museum invited the artist back for a second exhibition to mark the centenary of the birth of Italian director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini.

​Childhood and adolescence are recurrent themes in Cafagna’s art, which blends the formal elegance of traditional training with a trajectory into the contemporary world. Art critics have highlighted her ability to evoke a sense of timeless suspension, her subjects hovering between memory and oblivion as poignant reminders of our evanescence.