Le donne libere di Magliano (The free women of Magliano) – depictions of madness by Eleonora Rossi

On show at the palazzo of the Banca del Monte di Lucca Foundation from 10 May to 2 June, the exhibition “Le donne libere di Magliano”, recounts the profound disturbance of madness through women’s faces – the same women described by the doctor/writer Mario Tobino – masterfully depicted by the painter Eleonora Rossi.

A gallery of portraits of female faces that in their raw physiognomy captures the terrible condition of  psychiatric patients, each represented according to the expressive distortions provoked by their disturbance. Just as the scream of pain and anger constitute the undertone of Tobino’s writing, the same can be said for these works by Eleonora. These faces embody truths of painful destinies, the facial deformations are dramatic, like mirrors of unspeakable truths, like the obsessive echo of a piercing and endless pain […] despite this, the light of an infinite beauty shines from the depths of each of them. Looking at these women with a loving eye, while not immune from being touched by the suffering, we are called to identify with their situation – we can almost see their thoughts, histories, desires and even dreams of freedom.

For Tobino, as for Eleonora, these crazy, poor, recluse, forgotten and unbalanced women are “free”, because madness dispels all hypocrisies, annihilates inhibitions and offers release from the forced normality of social conventions. Marco Palamidessi – fondazionebmluccaeventi.il

Admission free:

Monday-Friday: 15.30 – 19.30

Weekend 10.00 – 13.00 / 15.30 – 19.30.