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Romualdo Locatelli: His artistic voyage, from Rome to Bali
A new book on Italian artist Romualdo Locatelli reveals new traces of his artistic whereabouts.
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Fascination: Locatelli’s artistic voyage began a new chapter upon his arrival in Bali, where exotic
landscapes and female dancers captivated him.
(Associazione Culturale Amici dei Locatelli Figli d'Arte /-)
I
talian artist Romualdo Locatelli’s niece, Daniela Locatelli, who presides over the Locatelli Art Association, presented a new book, titled Romualdo Locatelli, An Artistic Voyage from Rome the Eternal City to Bali, the Island of the Gods, on June 22 before a select group of invitees at the National Gallery of Indonesia in Jakarta.
Italian Ambassador to Indonesia Vittorio Sandalli, who attended the launch, noted that the book marked the 80th anniversary of the artist’s first exhibition in Java and the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Italy.
Written and edited by Vitorio Sgarbi and published by the production house Skira, the book comes as a 228-page paperback.
Daniela, who acted as the project’s initiator and coordinator, said she had visited Indonesia several times to meet people who had known and befriended her uncle.
“I started researching my uncle in 1972 and came back in 1998, and finally in 2019,” she says.
The book is a monograph that follows a standard print format on standard paper, where its importance lay not so much on the pictorial representation of the artwork but rather in the detailed written descriptions of some artwork and of the artist’s encounters during his voyage in the Indies and beyond.
The book is a complete biographical account that chronicles his entire artistic life and oeuvre – from the early years in Italy, where his first brushstrokes were guided by family traditions of the Locatelli family workshop, to the coveted stages of Milan and the Capital, interspersed with his first artistic journeys in Sardinia, Sicily, Maremma, Africa and the last years of his life in the East, including the Indies and the Philippines, where he was last seen going into the woods, and has since disappeared.
