Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1951 Genoa, Italy

Died: 1987 San Paolo, Brazil

Year of Migration to the UK: 1975

Biography

Painter and illustrator, Elena Samperi was born in Genoa, Italy on 26 February 1951, taking her first painting and drawing classes when she was 17. During her summers in the Emilia-Romagna region, where her parents were from originally, she trained in the studios of Arnaldo Bartoli, a local painter, and Cesare Zavattini, painter, writer, screenwriter, and one of the leading figures of Italian Neorealism. Both artists played a major role in her artistic formation, encouraging her creative pursuits and emphasising the importance of freedom of expression. In 1974 she graduated in English Language and History of Art from the University of Genoa.

Feeling that the Italian cultural and artistic environment was too conservative for her, in 1975 she moved to London, where she initially worked as an Italian teacher whilst trying to establish herself as an artist. These were years of great experimentation in which she explored different media and subjects. During this time she established a close friendship with the Argentinian artist Marisa Rueda, with whom she shared a studio, and began mixing with London artists engaged in the feminist movement. In 1980 she participated alongside other women artists in the important exhibition Women’s Images of Men, curated by the American artist Jacqueline Morreau and held at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), London, where her watercolour Madonna (1979, Victoria & Albert Museum) became one of the centre-pieces of the show. In this provocative and powerful work, Samperi subverted a centuries-old, sacred image depicting a grotesque Virgin and Child, where the Mother screams in protest as she suckles the Child – a fully grown but miniature man with sharpened teeth. Samperi explained that 'The woman in the picture is stuck forever in a frozen shout; she shouts as she realises what a prisoner she has been, but she cannot get away because of the male-cast role on her' (Irish Press, 26 June 1981).

In her 1981 exhibition at the Air One Gallery in London, Samperi explored the distresses of domestic life, painting exaggeratedly happy families immersed in a world of brilliantly coloured wallpapers and bright carpets. The figures, flattened on to the picture plane, became part of the wallpaper itself and, as Rosie Parker noted 'the angry gaiety of the interior décor serves to underline rather than negate the internal confusions of the family' (Parker 1982, p. 46). The Guardian art critic Waldemar Januszczak commented: 'There is nothing more sinister than a sinister comedy, nothing less innocent than feigned innocence as Elena Samperi well knows. She uses the apparent friendliness of her Yellow Submarine drawing-style to lure you into a world of Happy Families and wedding anniversaries populated by manically grinning monsters who bear a strong resemblance to the human race' (Januszczak 1981, p. 12). In 1982 Samperi explored the subject of war in a group exhibition at the Angel Intersection Gallery, showing her work alongside Rueda, Morreau, Silvia Ziranek and Jo Brocklehurst. In 1983–84 she participated in the travelling exhibition Pandora's Box, featuring works by the same collective of artists from Women’s Images of Men. The show reinterpreted the myth of Pandora and, overturning the mythical accusation that women were responsible for all the evils in the world, the artists represented women as figures of power, strength and independence, shaping men`s destiny. Samperi represented her own modern version of the myth, with butterfly-women pinned to the wall and imprisoned in glass boxes. In the artist's own words: 'The horror inside my women, the prison boxes, their doll's houses, their mortal glass chambers [are] indeed joined to another element: these figures are oppressed, but powerful and angry […] they shout in an outburst of rage, rage against the establishment perhaps but angry with themselves as well, trying to understand why and what is their share of responsibility in allowing 'the other' to keep them in boxes for so long' (as cited in Calvert 1984, p. 67). Samperi also illustrated children's' books and in 1985 she wrote and illustrated the fairy tale Green Mystery, published posthumously by the Elena Samperi Association in 2019.

In 1985 Samperi moved to San Paolo, Brazil. Together with Rueda, in 1987 she prepared an exhibition in London entitled Tropical Forests for Sale. Her idea for the show was to 'sell' strips of the forest she had painted, as a tragic parody of the misappropriation undertaken by the military dictators in South America. Elena Samperi died in a car accident in San Paolo, Brazil on 30 October 1987, before the exhibition came to fruition. Rueda continued to work on the project and it opened, as originally planned, at the Open Space Gallery in London in 1988. Samperi's work is represented in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Elena Samperi Collection, Corniglio, Italy.

Related books

Jacqueline Morreau, 'Elena Samperi Remembered', Women Artists Slide Library Journal, No. 21, Feb-Mar 1988, p. 20
Sarah Kent and Jacqueline Morreau, eds., Women's Images of Men, exhibition catalogue (New York: Writers & Readers Publishing Cooperative Soc. Ltd., 1985)
David Whetstone, 'Lid off a Myth', The Journal, 22 March 1985
Gill Calvert ed., Pandora's Box, exhibition catalogue (London: Trefoil Books, 1984)
Denise Hooker, 'Pandora's Box. Arnolfini Bristol', Arts Review, 22 June 1984
Rosie Parker 'Works on Paper by Elena Samperi', Spare Rib. A Women's Liberation Magazine, No. 115, February 1982, p. 46
Waldemar Januszczak, 'Review of Works on Paper at the Air Gallery', The Guardian, 21 November 1981, p. 12
Stephen Dixon, 'Women's Images of Men', Irish Journal, 7 July 1981
Blaithin O'Ciobhain, Women's Male Images, Irish Press, 26 June 1981
Roderick Bisson, 'Not Much Left of a Man's Modesty', The Daily Post Liverpool, 9 March 1981
'Adesso ti Spoglio Io', Panorama, 17 November 1980
'Musing on Machismo', Time Out, 2 October 1980
Emmanuel Cooper, 'Challenging Traditions', Gay News, October 1980
Kenneth Robinson, 'Old Mistresses', What's on in London, 7 October 1980
Caroline Tisdall, 'Women's Images of Men', The Guardian, 23 June 1980

Public collections

Related organisations

Elena Samperi Association (https://associazioneelenasamperi.com/)
University of Genoa (student)

Selected exhibitions

The Women Artists Diary, Fulham Palace (1989)
Elena Samperi, Marisa Rueda: Tropical Forests for Sale, Open Space Gallery, London (1988)
Pandora's Box, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (touring to Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and London, 1984-85)
New Beginnings, Pentonville Gallery, London (1983)
At the Crossroads, Angel Intersection Gallery, London (1982)
Reflections, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth (1982)
Elena Samperi Works on Paper, Air One Gallery, London (1981)
Women’s Images of Men, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London (touring to Bristol, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Dublin, 1980-81)
A Woman's View, Edward Totah Gallery, London (1980)
Women's Art Alliance, London (1979)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Elena Samperi]