Novella Parigini Biography
Novella Parigini (Chiusi, 29 April 1921 – Rome, 30 September 1993) was an Italian painter. His name is linked to the 50s and 60s, those of the "Dolce Vita", of which he was one of the symbols, electing Rome and in particular Via Margutta, as the stage of his existential and artistic events. She threw herself into the vortex of Roman life and also paid the price by becoming involved in legal affairs. His existentialism, however, differs from that of his friend Jean-Paul Sartre when this takes on political connotations; for Novella Parigini being an existentialist also meant being free from any political as well as sentimental tendency or bond, hers was a freedom that moved only towards the emancipation of man from the authority of conceptual forms given as absolute which dominate thought by amputating it of its infinite possibilities and only from this awareness, he says, can that total freedom arise which then takes the form of choice and responsibility. His transgressions, his excesses, were a way to experiment with the new possibilities offered by free thought and not a subversive or revolutionary attitude. When asked what he meant by Art, he replied: «An explication of thought, not of feeling,... of thought». As regards surrealism in Novella Parigini, this takes on different characteristics from those theorized by André Breton, it had nothing to do with the unconscious and the dreamlike, it was just an expressive form to express thought freely, a choice however influenced by his friendship with Salvador Dalí, who was also his teacher. He established himself in the world of Parisian existentialism; characterizing aspects of his art are the cat's eyes in male and female figures, pronounced cheekbones, turgid and fleshy lips, large breasts, the prototype of today's woman and the repetition of subjects which anticipated those processes of massification which only a few years later artists such as Andy Warhol have revived. Educated in the cult of beauty and hedonism inherited from her aristocratic Sienese family, her experience mixed with French existentialism, feminism and surrealism, and then resulted in a pioneering and intellectual form of Pop art. Snobbish and aristocratic, inserted in the Parisian intellectual circles, in the immediate post-war period, she appeared walking unscrupulously through the Parisian streets with "heretical" clothing, becoming the protagonist of social life. After his death, some letters from Gabriele D'Annunzio were found (including one of the first drafts of The Rain in the Pineto) to Novella's mother Emilia, in which it is the poet himself who gives the name to Novella and provides the instructions of functioning of an "infallible" talisman given to her by him. He has exhibited in many cities around the world, including in China; the French post office issued a stamp reproducing one of his paintings and numerous paintings are exhibited in various churches (see also K. Puccini, 1985 and E. Echeoni, 1999). She committed herself to the defense of Via Margutta threatened by building speculation which wanted to transform the art ateliers into mini-apartments, and the exhibition of the "One Hundred Painters" which she had wanted since 1955 and in which she participated together with established artists and above all strangers, to offer them a chance. From the beginning of the seventies until his death he began an intense pictorial partnership with Elvino Echeoni who now takes care of its foundation. In 1993 she died and was buried in the Verano Cemetery. The municipality of Olbia named a street after her in the tourist resort of Porto Rotondo.
