Biography

She likes to define herself as “a painter and a traveler who loves to explore new territories and cross borders”. LeoNilde Carabba, born in Monza on the 28th of November 1938, presently lives in Milan. LeoNilde’s first works are refined rhythmical compositions on a geometrical texture. In the Seventies LeoNilde was strongly involved in the Women’s Movement and her work became free from geometrical motifs and more fluent – with motifs of seas, skies, trees, geological descriptions of the earth’s crust on increasingly large canvases. In 1982 she began to paint on wooden boards and moved to Bolinas, California, where she has remained for five years. Pierre Restany said of her work: “You just need to pay some attention to the lyrical morphology of LeoNilde Carabba’s language to understand the obvious fact that her painting is made with skin, blood and heart. By adopting this kind of language she demonstrates her complete unselfishness in meeting her fate”. In 1988 she was back again in Milan. In the last decade her work has become more refined and hinged on depth symbols, about which Riccardo Barletta wrote: “Symbols of no time and no place, as they can be found in any age or culture. The Sacred Mountain, the Maze, the Sun, the Zigurath, the Pyramid, the Mandala. It is a sort of dictionary where any word becomes the Word”.