Antonietta Raphael, showing the passing stranger

(ANSA) - ROME, NOVEMBER 17 - Independent and nonconformist woman.

   Soul with very strong cultural roots but with a strong European vocation. Talent nourished by the most lively artistic fermenters of the early twentieth century, capable of passing from paper ("drawing first of all", he said) to canvas and again to matter (passing through the violin), with those sculptures so large that some doubted they were forged by female hands .

   For too long Antonietta Raphael (Kaunas 1895 - Rome 1975) has been vampirized by a masculine habit that often (still) affects women in art, as well as overshadowed by that union with the father of her daughters, the painter MarioMafai. Today it is the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome to tell it with "Antonietta Raphael.

   Through the mirror "(until January 30), exhibition curated by Giorgio Calò and Alessandra Troncone, with the scientific supervision of their daughter Giulia Mafai (who died just two months ago) and the collaboration of Ariel Mafai Giorgi. , tell the curators, who have built a path through its recaproduction, made up of cross-references and doubling, "in the mirror", in fact.

    There are four thematic areas: the self-portrait with also the famous painting that sees her in a blue work suit and many "reflections" in Mafai's works;

femininity and maternity, with the dramatic Childbirth (when Raphael's first daughter was alone and unmarried in Florence in 1926) and the sculpture Tresorelle;

the Jewish origins, with Judith and Holofernes who, according to some, has the face of Mafai himself;

and finally his entourage with portraits of key figures such as Giacomo Manzù and Renato Guttuso.

"Among the unpublished works - add the curators - the passport that was feared lost, with the date of birth visibly changed, perhaps to reduce the age difference with Mafai. And the portrait of Giuseppe Berti".

(HANDLE).