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Tapestry

Fiora Gandolfi's interest in contemporary tapestry was born from the circumstance of finding herself cooped up day after day in a hospital room at the bedside of her husband who had suffered a heart attack. She found herself overcome by a desire to plunge into a new artistic pursuit that would suit the new rhythm of her life that compelled her to wander from one city to another.
The flexibility of a painting realized not with brushes but with wool makes the arras (or tapestry) the chief home decoration of the nomad. The arras can be put to multiple uses: as a blanket, a panel, a door, a dividing wall, a floor covering. This versatility, together with its capacity to demonstrate particular refinement and culture, rendered the arras amongst the most prized possessions in medieval times when the nobility often found themselves obliged to move from one empty castle to another, taking with them only linen chests and tapestries.

The tapestries have been published in Rakam magazine.

Arazzo Infarto

Heart Attack

1974
234 x 157 cm
The first tapestry of a long series depicting various landscapes as seen from an aeroplane - Veneto, Asturias, Castilla, Guadalquivir, Cuenca - born by chance from Gandolfi's overwhelming desire to escape that sickroom in the hospital and take flight like a seagull whose claws are embroidery needles. She bought herself a canvas, wools and needles. With a brush she sketched the heart attack - the area of the ischemia, the dead tissue - onto the perforated panel. Then she filled in the spots in needlepoint, and around them, painting in wool, a grand vortex depicting her own contracting guts, the white bedside table, the bars on the bed, and the feathers floating down to become her wings.
Barene

Barene

1975
160 x 200 cm
Barene is the Italian name for the muddy islands or sandbars that form the Venetian lagoon and on which the city was built. This tapestry depicts the slow course of the sandy waters as seen from the air, the mirror of the shallow lagoon surrounding Torcello, Mazzorbo, Mazzorbetto and Burano.
Reattivo di Rorschach

Reattivo di Rorschach

1974
280 x 150 cm
The winter evenings are too long and lonely on the small island of Mazzorbetto. Lost in the Venetian Lagoon, Rita and Maurizio, children of Moleca the fisherman, go to work on the huge carpet that depicts the second last blot of the Rorschach test.

Ceilings and Walls

Hexagonal Ceiling

Soffitto Esagonale (Hexagonal Ceiling)

1984
Behind the filiform sculptured lights, a ceiling depicting the four seasons painted in mixed media of tempera and acrylic.
Givergny wall

Parete Givergny (Givergny Wall)

1990
Rapidly applied strokes of both brush and palette knife create the impression of movement on this very fixed wall. Mixed media of bees wax, tempera and pastel.
Ceiling in Tiepolo green

Soffitto verde Tiepolo (Ceiling in Tiepolo green)

1990, restored 1998
Rolling hills of clouds building up before a storm. Media: tempera
Painted ceiling

Painted ceiling

1990 and 1994
Painted ceiling reproducing the variations of the shades and lights of an XVIII century Venetian chandelier
Painted wall

Painted wall

1985
Painted wall with graffiti, Mixed media
Fresco

Affresco con frammenti di specchio (Fresco with mirror fragments)

2002
Mirrors corroded over time encrust a crumbling wall.
Travi 2

Travi dipinte, acrilico e cera d’api (Painted beams, acrylic and beeswax)

2011
Paris
Mannequin Lamp 1

Half Manequin Lamp

2011