Franca Settembrini

Franca Settembrini

1947, Italy

After having spent many years in a psychiatric hospital in Florence, Franca Settembrini entered La Tinaia studio where she opens up in painting.
The parallelism between her paintings and the Fauvism’s works is evident: fiery expressionism represented by the vigorously applied strong colours. But her creativity is free of any artistic influence: she has surely never known the work of Matisse, Kirchner or Picasso (even if there are similarities in some of her drawings).
In her works, female figures predominate; men are much less common, and they tend to be seen in profile and wearing some kind of turban.
In all of them, one element stands out, which came to characterize her style: the large hands with ambiguous meaning. Do they want to meet or do they want to fight?  “The caressing hand has fingernails that are also ready to scratch”.