Mai Sedersi sugli Allori
B i o g r a p h y
Among the artists of her generation, Carla Tolomeo has a
“special” personality and her history has developed through
outstanding studies and insights which brought her to under-
take painting, sculpture and writing, as to demonstrate that
there is no real defined limit among all expressions of Art.
She has been painting and exhibiting her works until 1997, in
Italy, in Europe and in the United States. After her last exhibi-
tion in London, “Tribute to Leonardo”, at the Leicester’s Gal-
leries, she has astonished her collectors creating her famous
Sculptured Chairs, a real apology of artistic amusement which
has been immediately welcome by the world, so tired of intel-
lectualisms and sophistications.
As she writes herself in the presentation to her first catalogue
dedicated to Sculptures, her own philosophy is the change-
transformation from a simple object to an object of art, start-
ing from the most common and daily one: the Chair itself.
Standinng on her life experience, her learning, her large stud-
ies on Borges, her study on Japanese Painting Ukuyo-e and
her passed memory of her ancient guide, Giorgio de Chirico,
her skills succeed in trasforming it into a Totem, a jerk of fish-
es, an enormous flower, into something magic which springs
from newly encountered childhood, with the cleverness of a
well experienced life. Always with care, sense of composition
and colour research with are the richness of her painting.
As a painter, she has often challenged herself with the great
artists of the past and she has re-interpreted them, turning up
side down and isolating their single elements, reworking them
“as if they were still life” to be dissected and returned to the
public after having being visited by her personal vis pittorica.
She makes her début at the international exhibition “D’après”
in Lugano, in 1971.
Her “Tribute to Carpaccio”, from 1976 until 1982, has been
exhibited successfully everywhere in Europe, celebrated by
writers like Gregor von Rezzori, Ruggero Jacobbi, Carlo Sgor-
lon; she has exhibited at the Galleria del Naviglio from 1979
until 1994; Achille Bonito Oliva invites her among “The pro-
tagonists of the eighties” in Sciacca.
She has studie Dürer (1990-1991) and exhibited drawings
and oil paintings at the museum of Campione – and also
studied Mantegna, consequently there has been an important
exhibition specifically in Mantova, at the Casa del Mantegna in
1995, after the Exhibition in Palazzo Reale in Milano in 1992,
entitled “The rooms of Memory”, edited by Pierre Restany and
presented by Rossana Bossaglia, which marks her solitary
success as an artist outside any model.
In 1992 she is being commissioned a huge mosaic for the Mi-
lan Underground. For the Courthouse in Milan she paints “The
tree of Justice”, an will be exhibited in Milan and in London to-
gether with a catalogue containing an unpublished Leonardo’s
work about the “Primacy of Painting” above all other Arts.
Together with her studies in painting she dedicates herself to
engraving. She engraves many plates for Borges’s “bestiaries”
and Montale’s ones afterwards, experimenting the most dif-
ferent techniques, from the dry point to the copperplate, from
lithography to serigraphy. Her first book is published by Ceras-
tico, four xylography works for Charles Baudelaires’s “Sainte
Jeunesse”. In 1983 for the publisher Bandini she engraves
“The Casanova’s Mysteries” twenty two plates which cover
the polyhedral adventure’s life, of whom Tolomeo has always
been a keen expert. Leonardo Sciascia dedicates her the in-
troductory essay, being a Casanova’s specialist and an expert
in graphics, as well as great admirer of the artist.
She illustrates with twelve original drawings the “Lands of the
sun” for Crocetti publisher, with a writing by Roberto Sanesi
who was the first one to speak about Tolomeo in 1971.
Subsequently there are fourteen watercolour paintings dedi-
cated to Petrarca for the Dadò publisher and nineteen water-
paint works for the numbered edition of “La Chanson de la Cr-
oisade Albigeoise” for Marietti publisher. She engraves for “La
Divina Commedia” a series of plates for the Canto XXII of the
Inferno, Publitalia publisher. In 1990 with Gesualdo Bufalino’s
introduction she dedicates twelve etchings to Paul Verlaine’s
“Fetes Galantes” for Sciardelli publisher. Finally for Gribaudo
publisher she dedicates thirty original water-paint works to a
new edition of Borges’Manual de Zoologìa fantastica”.
Since 1997 she becomes the “Lady of Chairs”.
The sculptured Chairs are immediately reviewed by the most
important art and furniture magazine of the world. On “Tu” in
Tel Aviv, “Modern Home” in Hong Kong, “Arte” in Milano, “AD”
in Italy, Russia, France, America. Also “Elle”, “Marie Claire”,
“Salon” and “Mezzanin” in Moscow, “Arte in”, “House and
Garden”, all fashion magazines and TV interviews.
In 1998 Neiman Marcus, for his Feast of Italy, orders ten piec-
es to Tolomeo which will be exhibited in Dallas and New York.
