Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco’s world of paintings revolves around simple objects such as the dining table, writing desk, and a house plant that grows everyday. She describes them as “unashamedly feminine interiors” alluding to the woman and her inner life. Beyond their functional purposes, objects within her set-up take on another more subtle role – one that is of the subconscious, tethered to past memories or experiences of childhood. The objects in Del Turco’s paintings are intertwined with her longing for a nonexistent place and time, one she could call home. Having lived most of her adult life away from Italy, Del Turco finds a sense of stability in everyday domestic objects which she revisits more than once, such as a beloved pair of shears or a sugar bowl.

Born in Italy in 1967, Del Turco descends from a line of Florentine Renaissance painters, most notably under the mastery of Cosimo Rosselli (b. 1440). His favorite pupil was Piero di Cosimo, another Italian painter of the Renaissance most well-known for the mythological and allegorical subjects he painted during the late Quattrocento. Cosimo’s half-brother was a printmaker who specialized in maps, and his cousin Bernardo di Stefano was a painter who had also been an apprentice of Neri di Bicci.

Del Turco is inspired by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Paul Cézanne, and in particular, Giorgio Morandi. From these artists, she learned how this overlooked genre of painting has the ability to speak about the human condition and investigate the world that surrounds us. What makes Del Turco stand out in the modern art world, however, is her own amalgamation of still life – her work bears a subtlety and quality of timelessness in depicting simple subjects, yet Del Turco goes further by integrating sentiments and subject matter from modern life.

Author: Allen Yi