“L’Artificio” is the first project activated by LEA APS, Independent Artist-Run Project Space, born from the collaboration between visual artists and former RUFA students Elisa Selli and Ellen Wolf, under the patronage of the Primo Municipio di Roma Capitale.
The L’Artificio project consists of a painting and drawing workshop featuring people with Down Syndrome and was born in November 2022 out of the artists’ desire to instil a passion for contemporary art in artists who are still budding, as well as a desire to undertake artistic research outside their usual context.
The encounter between pupils and painting proved to be a extraordinary discovery: while the aesthetic sensibility of the artists was immediately impressed by the extreme capacity for synthesis and the simplicity of the forms in the first drawings produced, the students became passionate about art lesson after lesson, to such an extent that they practised drawing even outside the course hours, finding in Painting a means of expression that could embody their way of seeing the world.
The workshop course involved budding artists Benedetta Menghini, Francesco Congestrì and Antonio Materia and took place on a weekly basis for seven months, articulated in various experiential artistic activities and following a route that, starting from the LEA APS headquarters in the heart of Rome’s Esquilino district, travelled through some of the city’s artistic venues to discover the colours, shapes and techniques of life drawing, including Civic Museum of Zoology and National Roman Museum Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.
The main purpose of the L’Artificio is to raise pupils’ awareness of art in all its forms, urging them to experience a close relationship with drawing and painting through a variety of experiential art activities. This, together with the guidance of the two artists, primarily aimed at stimulate participants’ imaginative abilities and secondly to guide these in composition and painting technique.
The workshop hours thus gave rise to a vast production of works of different types, with different materials and formats including collage, paintings on paper, plastic and canvas, which together with a maxi site-specific work will be the protagonists of the final exhibition of the project’s first season.
On show from 8 June to 22 June 2023
At LEA APS, Via Cairoli 63, Rome
Monday-Friday: 3-6 p.m
By appointment also on Saturday and Sunday
Tuesday closed
Free entrance
