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FRANCESCA LEONE
beyond the water
essay by
Christopher Adams
IL CIGNO GG EDIZIONI
ROMA

FRANCESCA LEONE
beyond the water
contents
essay by
Christopher Adams
20 September - 10 October 2012
Opera Gallery London
134 New Bond Street
London W1S 2TF, United Kingdom
photographs
Marco Palombi
Fausto Capalbo
Press Il Cigno GG Edizioni
Maria Letizia Cassata
the artist wishes to thank
her beloved sister Raffaella
foreword 7
Jean-David Malat
Director, Opera Gallery London
Gilles Dyan
Founder and Chairman, Opera Gallery Group
francesca leone: motion / emotion 9
Christopher Adams
Assistant Curator, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
flussi immobili 15
flussi immobili materici 45
biography 63
list of works 66
front cover
Flussi Immobili L (Upside down)
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil, bitumen
on canvas, 250 x 190 cm
ISBN 978-88-7831-287-6
All rights reserved
©2012 IL CIGNO GG EDIZIONI, ROMA
IL CIGNO GG EDIZIONI
Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro, 15 00186 Roma
Tel +39/066865493 fax +39/066892109
www.ilcigno.org
sito nel Complesso Monumentale di San Salvatore in Lauro
un immobile dell’Ente morale Pio Sodalizio dei Piceni

FOREWORD
The new series of Francesca Leone’s large-scale emotional portraits is
presented at Opera Gallery London for the reopening of the art season, after
all the hubbub of the Olympic Games and the summer period.
It is with great pleasure that we exhibit the work of a committed artist whose
relentless search for emotion and humanity goes deep under the skin of her
subjects.
The passion within the layers of paint, the intensity of the close-ups, the power
of the brushstrokes and the mastered technique of representation…all these
elements take Francesca Leone’s work a big step further than traditional
portraiture, and make her work so eye-catching to a public of art lovers and
emotion seekers.
When I asked Francesca why she chose to represent her subjects as if
drenched under litres of water, she replied: “For the vulnerability. When
someone is thrown water at, they lose all self-control, all façade protection.
The water washes everything away and the only thing that is left is the raw
and true human nature”.
This exhibition is therefore much more than a painting display; it is truly an
exhibition of the human, a series of paintings depicting the souls behind the faces.
We are very proud to provide the walls that will bear these souls for the time
of an exceptional show.
Jean-David Malat
Director
Opera Gallery London
Gilles Dyan
Founder and Chairman
Opera Gallery Group
7

FRANCESCA LEONE: MOTION / EMOTION
On first acquaintance with these new works by Francesca Leone, one could be
forgiven for thinking that they are solely concerned with the inherent irony of
attempting to capture movement in a static medium – something summarised
in the paradoxical title given to the pieces: Immobile Flux. It is an irony that
one might suppose would naturally be appreciated by a painter immersed from
an early age in the world of ‘motion pictures’, which also rely on still images to
generate a convincing illusion of movement – albeit a vast number, presented
to the viewer in rapid succession, in contrast to the painter’s single rectangular
expanse of canvas. Leone’s use of photography as the point of departure for
her works – with its unique ability to arrest motion – would only appear to
reinforce this interpretation.
And yet whilst her choice of flowing water as subject matter reveals an interest
in a problem that has occupied artists for centuries, and which particularly
fascinated the Italian avant-garde in the early years of the twentieth Century,
it would be a mistake to see it as the overriding focus of these images. Indeed,
if it were so they would be far less interesting than they actually are. Rather, it
is their equal attention to the psychological dynamics of the frozen image that
makes the works displayed in the present exhibition so compelling.
It seems relevant at this point to recall Goethe’s notion of the ‘fugitive moment’:
that precise point during the performance of an action that is carefully selected
by the painter for its ability to encompass an altogether wider temporal scope and
convey a sense of animation by implying both the sequence of events or
movements leading up to that point, and those which must necessarily follow it.
In looking at a work such as Emotionless, for instance, we understand that we
are viewing the features of man through a (moving) stream of water rather than
a (static) sheet of ice; our knowledge of this fact endows the image with an
unstable quality, in keeping with Goethe’s recommendation that ‘no part of the
whole ought to be found before in this position and, in a little time after, every part
should be obliged to quit that position; it is by this means that the work be always
animated for millions of spectators’ 1 . However, what is true for the physical acts
depicted in an artwork is also true for its metaphysical aspects: a single ‘moment’
likewise being able to contain a broader emotional sweep than one ‘pitched
upon’ 2 with less judiciousness, communicating to the attentive viewer the full
complexity of an emotional state – or rather, psychological flux.
1
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Observations on the Laocoon’, in Goethe on Art, ed. by John Gage (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 78-88 (p. 81).
2
Ibid.
9

It is, then, this expansive nature of the frozen image – both in terms of its ability
to say something about ‘universal dynamism’, and to pinpoint something
decisive about an individual’s fluid ‘state of mind’ – that would appear to interest
Leone here, and which is encompassed in the title of this exhibition.
In the latter sense, nothing exemplifies this ‘telescopic’ potential of still imagery
better than the photographic snapshot. Such images tend to increase in potency
the longer we look at them, revealing fluctuating areas of light and shade in the
expressions and attitudes of individuals that are brought into sharper focus the
more closely acquainted we become with their complex personalities in real
life. This is surely part of the reason why we choose to surround ourselves with
images of loved ones that are of this nature, rather than with more controlled,
formal portraits, which give less away. It is perhaps the way in which such
imagery repays closer study and consideration in this manner that also
explains why Leone works with both the camera and the brush: having
captured a spontaneously (and perhaps involuntarily) evocative photographic
image, the longer duration of the painterly process enables its hidden depths
to be unlocked, teased out and brought to light.
In this respect the central role played by photography in Leone’s practice forms
a fascinating point of contact with the approach adopted by Francis Bacon, for
whom the work of Eadweard Muybridge (another artist who analysed
movement through still photography) as well as ‘found’ imagery culled from a
wide range of magazines and books, constituted a rich seam of source material
by freezing the human form and features in expressive or suggestive attitudes
and gestures – accidental postures that, paradoxically, betrayed something
altogether more eternal and enduring about the human condition. Having
triggered a profound emotional response within the mind of the artist, the power
of these images – which famously littered the floor of Bacon’s studio – only
became more evident the longer they were meditated upon and reworked
radically in paint, a process that allowed his works to transcend their source
material and ‘get on to the nerve’ 3 .
One suspects that as much as anything else the falling water in these paintings
constitutes a means of generating an image charged with just such expressive
potential: Leone discerning in the instinctive, fleeting reactions of these faces
an underlying sense of something powerfully eloquent to be enhanced through
an extended process of contemplation and re-creation. Like Bacon, then,
Leone uses photographs in constructing her works more as preliminary studies
rather than as ends in themselves. These are not conceptual exercises in the
manner of Chuck Close’s virtuoso transpositions of mechanically produced
imagery, but are rather attempts to capture something of the soul of the subject
3
Quoted in Rebecca Daniels, ‘Francis Bacon: Behind the Myth’, The Telegraph, 16 August 2008. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3558531/Francis-Bacon-behind-the-myth.html
(accessed 19 July 2012).
and, more importantly, of her own soul – for Leone has stated that she brings
her own state of mind to bear on these images in the process of their creation 4
(much as an essay interpreting the work of an artist will to a certain extent
reflect the author’s prevailing mood at the time of writing, for that matter).
Leone has been disarmingly – and refreshingly – frank about her own emotional
fragility at certain times in her life; recently, however, she has spoken of a
newfound tranquillity. In the light of this one cannot but impute a symbolic role
to the motif of water in these images, which brings to mind notions of
purification, transition – and ultimately redemption. In certain images, such as
Smile, Breathing again and Looking beyond, this is depicted in terms of a
joyous exuberance. And yet while these works speak of cleansing, the distinct
impression conveyed by many is that peace of mind is hard-won, and that
finding it is far from a painless process that is preceded by extended periods
of soul-searching and inner turmoil – and which leaves scars of its own.
Transition from one phase of life to another is rarely achieved without setbacks,
moments of doubt and feelings of vulnerability – all emotions evoked here
(these figures are presumably naked, after all). Indeed, in a twist on the
conventional symbolism, Leone presents the process less in terms of a baptism
than an exorcism. In this respect, pieces such as Rage, Noisy silence and
Emerging once again recall the works of Bacon: the streams of water which
obscure the faces of Leone’s characters, hovering against ominously dark
backgrounds, evoking that corrosive black rain pouring down over the agonised
faces of Bacon’s tortured popes (the blurred heads of some of Leone’s earlier
dancing figures in fact also bring to mind the Irish artist’s violent distortions of
the human head).
To use art-historical shorthand, then, these works are more Expressionist than
Futurist in character – although the aims of the two movements were in fact not
mutually exclusive 5 – and it is the Expressionist tradition with which Leone
herself most closely identifies her work, its physicality relating it to the (abstract)
American tradition as much as to the (figurative) European tendency. Indeed,
in creating these images she fluctuates between the two idioms: her gestural
brushstrokes and drips of paint resolving themselves into concrete forms only
upon stepping back from the canvas 6 .
Perhaps inevitably, the scale of Leone’s imagery has often been described as
‘cinematic’ in its epic scope. Such parallels and references are inescapable,
and undoubtedly valid: consciously or unconsciously, the silver screen would
appear to have seeped into the very fabric of Leone’s art, which also echoes
4
See Sandra Aquilina, ‘Out of the Shadows’, Sunday Circle, March 2010. http://www.francescaleone.it/site/wpcontent/themes/gallery/images/recensioni/big/sundaycircle0310.pdf
(accessed 19 July 2012).
5
The terms ‘universal dynamism’ and ‘states of mind’, noted above, both refer to key themes in the work of early
Futurist painters such as Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo.
6
See the article referred to in note 4, above.
10 11

her father’s fascination with the human face and employs a similar use of
extreme close-ups, often cropped in such a manner as to focus on the eyes
(Rage, Not so close). And yet once more it is clearly the emotional, rather than
the purely physical, dimensions of film which has exerted the most profound
influence on this artist: that overwhelming sense of total immersion in the image
familiar to any movie-goer. This large format, then, is one which speaks of the
need for self-expression on a grand scale – but in terms of catharsis rather
than of egoism – and is one demanded by the emotional intensity of Leone’s
work. Above all, perhaps, it is dictated by the subject itself: the human condition
– a monumentally complex field of enquiry that calls for an equally monumental
treatment.
For C
Christopher Adams
Assistant Curator
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
12

FLUSSI IMMOBILI

Flussi Immobili 1
(Smile)

Flussi Immobili 4
(Rage)

Flussi Immobili 2
(Emotionless)
Flussi Immobili 5
(Fearless)

Flussi Immobili 9
(Relief)
Flussi Immobili 8
(Breathing again)

Flussi Immobili 7
(Nothing but the dark)

Flussi Immobili 10
(Memories)

Flussi Immobili 11
(Looking back)
Flussi Immobili 12
(Looking beyond)

Flussi Immobili 18
(So far away)
Flussi Immobili 19
(This is him)

Flussi Immobili 14
(A new day)
Flussi Immobili 15
(Noisy silence)

Flussi Immobili 20
(Delete and be deleted)

Flussi Immobili 21
(Not so close)

Flussi Immobili 25
(Thinking of love )

Flussi Immobili 22
(emerging)

Flussi Immobili 23
(Desires)

FLUSSI IMMOBILI
MATERICI

Flussi Immobili L
(Upside down)

Flussi Immobili G
(An ordinary day)

Flussi Immobili D
(Regrets)

Flussi Immobili B
(Lost in my thoughts)
Flussi Immobili A
(This is me)

Flussi Immobili H
(The weight of the water)

Flussi Immobili F
(Dreaming)

Flussi Immobili E
(And the water flows)

Flussi Immobili I
(Profile)

BIOGRAPHY
Francesca Leone was born in Rome into a family of artists. Her father Sergio
is the renowned film director of several masterpieces of International
cinematography, and her mother was the first ballerina at the Teatro dell’Opera
in Rome. After completing a Scenography Design course at the Fine Arts
Academy of Rome, Francesca Leone decides to dedicate herself to painting.
She specialises in painting and graduates with professor Lino Tardia at the
Rome University of Fine Arts. In 2007, she participates in an exhibition curated
by Claudio Strinati for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at
the Capitoline Museums in Rome. Her first solo exhibition is held in Palermo,
at the Loggiato di San Bartolomeo, in April 2008. Together with Bonalumi,
Gallo, Guccione and Mitoraj, Francesca is invited to create a work for the
exhibition “Galilei Divine Man” which opened in December 2008 at the Basilica
of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome, on initiative of the World
Federation of Scientists. At the end of 2008, Palazzo Venezia dedicates her
a solo exhibition, curated once again by Claudio Strinati, and in March 2009,
she is invited by the Municipality of Naples to exhibit her work at the Castel
dell’Ovo.
In June 2009, she exhibits the portrait of the composer Ennio Morricone, who
received the prestigious “Mc Kim Medal 2009” award by the American
Academy in Rome. In July 2009, she is invited by the curator, Maurizio Calvesi,
to participate in an exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA)
in Moscow. On this occasion, Francesca is nominated Honorary Member of
the Russian Art Academy and was designated with this honour by the President
of the Academy, Zurab Tsereteli.
In March 2010, Galleria Valentina Moncada hosts a solo exhibition dedicated
to her, entitled “Flussi Immobili”. The same month, Francesca participates in
the exhibition “Contemporary Art for the Temple of Zeus”, held in the
magnificent Archaeological Park of the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento
together with the works of fifty other international artists, among whom Afro,
Arman, Mimmo Jodice, Hermann Nitsch, Daniel Spoerri.
For the 150 th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, Francesca is commissioned
to create a work to celebrate Giuseppe Garibaldi, for the exhibition “Giuseppe
Garibaldi...Tutt’altra Italia io sognavo” (Giuseppe Garibaldi...I dreamed of a
completely different Italy), held at at the National Museum of Castel
Sant’Angelo in Rome. Her portrait was chosen as the iconic image of the
exhibition and was on view from September 2010 to April 2011.
In 2011, Francesca was invited to participate in the 54 th International Art
Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italian Pavilion.
63

In June 2012, Francesca Leone is among the artists chosen to represent the
dialogue between Art and Sports at the Internationali BNL di Tennis, held at
the Foro Italico in Rome. The same month, she also participates in the
exhibition entitled “Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Journey to Italy”, held at the Musei
San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome, with a portrait of the renowned Russian
novelist, commissioned by the organisers (Il Cigno GG Edizioni in
collaboration with the Museum of the City of Moscow and the State Museum
of Literature of Moscow).
Fascinated by the relationship between water, its purity, its paradoxical
strength, and that which the face expresses under the flow of running water,
Francesca concentrates her research and pictorial expression in the cycle of
works entitled Flussi Immobili.
Since 2010, the Opera Gallery obtained the exclusive rights to her work for its
branches in Paris, Montecarlo, Miami and London. In their London gallery, the
new exhibition season opens with a solo exhibition dedicated to the artist at the
conclusion of the Olympic Games.
64

1. Flussi Immobili 1
(Smile)
2009, mixed media on canvas
200 x 150 cm
2. Flussi Immobili 4
(Rage)
2010, mixed media on canvas
175 x 250 cm
LIST OF WORKS
1 2 3
3. Flussi Immobili 2
(Emotionless)
2009, mixed media on canvas
200 x 150 cm
4. Flussi Immobili 5
(Fearless)
2010, mixed media on canvas
130 x 110 cm
5. Flussi Immobili 9
(Relief)
2010, mixed media on canvas
200 x 115 cm
4 5 6
6. Flussi Immobili 8
(Breathing again)
2010, mixed media on canvas
200 x 150 cm
7. Flussi Immobili 7
(Nothing but the dark)
2009, mixed media on canvas
130 x 110 cm
8. Flussi Immobili 10
(Memories)
2010, mixed media on canvas
160 x 200 cm
7 8 9
9. Flussi Immobili 11
(Looking back)
2010, mixed media on canvas
200 x 160 cm
10. Flussi Immobili 12
(Looking beyond)
2010, mixed media on canvas
180 x 180 cm
11. Flussi Immobili 18
(So far away)
2011, mixed media on canvas
225 x 160 cm
10 11 12
12. Flussi Immobili 19
(This is him)
2011, mixed media on canvas
240 x 240 cm

13. Flussi Immobili 14
(A new day)
20. Flussi Immobili L
(Upside down)
2010, mixed media on canvas
200 x 150 cm
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 250 x 190 cm
14. Flussi Immobili 15
(Noisy silence)
21. Flussi Immobili G
(An ordinary day)
2010, mixed media on canvas
160 x 200 cm
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 240 x 160 cm
15. Flussi Immobili 20
(Delete and be deleted)
22. Flussi Immobili D
(Regrets)
13 14 15
2011, mixed media on canvas
120 x 120 cm
20
21 22
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 180 x 180 cm
16. Flussi Immobili 21
(Not so close)
2011, mixed media on canvas
74 x 155 cm
23. Flussi Immobili B
(Lost in my thoughts)
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 240 x 220 cm
17. Flussi Immobili 25
(Thinking of love )
2012, mixed media on canvas
180 x 180 cm
24. Flussi Immobili A
(This is me)
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 200 x 240 cm
25. Flussi Immobili H
(The weight of the water)
16 17
23
24 25
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 190 x 250 cm
18. Flussi Immobili 22
(emerging)
26. Flussi Immobili F
(Dreaming)
2011, mixed media on canvas
110 x 130 cm
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 200 x 170 cm
19. Flussi Immobili 23
(Desires)
27. Flussi Immobili E
(And the water flows)
2011, mixed media on canvas
180 x 180 cm
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 240 x 240 cm
18 19
26 27 28
28. Flussi Immobili I
(Profile)
2012, paper, sand, plastic, oil
bitumen on canvas, 100 x 120 cm

€ 30,00 (i.i.)
(£ 25,00)
Finito di stampare
nel mese di luglio 2012
presso Ciesse - Guidonia
per conto de
IL CIGNO GG EDIZIONI
Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro, 15 00186 Roma
sito nel Complesso Monumentale di San Salvatore in Lauro,
un immobile dell’Ente morale Pio Sodalizio dei Piceni.
PIO SODALIZIO DEI PICENI