EXHIBITION: Flavia Arlotta. Inner Gardens

Arlotta's still-life works on show from 13 September 2025 to 16 December 2025

Flavia Arlotta was a reserved artist, perhaps even a little secretive in her work. She lived a long life in a house that was open to friends. Her daily life was interwoven with art and everyday vicissitudes, filled with temperance, grace and silent intensity. With her husband, painter Giovanni Colacicchi, she built an affectionate and productive dialogue born from their shared mindset and gaze, whereby reality was to be looked upon with love. From Giovanni, Flavia learned technique and acquired a taste for composition. Yet she knew how to develop her own female voice, which was original and the product of patience and slow gestation, profoundly experienced.

In Flavia’s early works, one can sense her closeness to painter Onofrio Martinelli, a friend for whom she felt brotherly affection; later, she was influenced by Emanuele Cavalli. Yet the characteristics of Flavia’s painting would soon emerge with clarity, as her son Francesco Colacicchi recalls, “My father’s painting looks like it is by a man, my mother’s by a woman, and rightly so”, as they both transfer their humanity onto their work – their inner world of curiosity and sensitivity. 

Flavia Arlotta’s world is like a braid whose strands are the farm with its olive grove, vegetable garden and flower garden, where the seasons pass quietly; her large house, with its bright rooms, the kitchen, their studios, and friends. Her life is reflected in her canvases, where life is sublimated by silence and anticipation. Family photographs, travel journals, oil paintings and the objects that accompanied her bear witness to this intertwining of art and life, which emerges naturally and with luminosity, because it was genuinely lived.

A collection of works by Flavia Arlotta, courtesy of the Arlotta-Colacicchi Archive and Collection

Il Palmerino’s exhibition, housed in rooms that reflect its spirit, offers an opportunity to draw closer to this inner landscape. Flavia’s affectionate portraits, her meditative landscapes and silent still-life works speak to us of a style of painting that captures the secret light of things and retains it on canvas. Alongside the paintings, small sketchbooks mark the stages of a discreet but prolific journey, pieced together from moments stolen from the cares of everyday life, but still deeply rooted in living.

Flavia’s numerous depictions were sometimes quick and only hinted at; in other cases, they were more insistent and meditative. However, they capture the first images that appeared before her eyes, the first ideas that surfaced in her mind, that she sought to retain and reflect upon, whilst patiently bringing her paintings to fruition. Family photos and objects she held dear contribute to defining the harmonious image of the artist and her universe.

As Piero Calamandrei once wrote about Tuscany: “This is the land where, it seems to us, even objects have acquired, through enduring civilisation, the gift of simplicity and moderation.” These are the very same qualities that distinguish the life and works of Flavia Arlotta.

This exhibition, co-curated by Laura Casprini and Francesco Colacicchi, is part of 'The Garden Project', created with partners Calliope Arts, in collaboration with the British Institute of Florence, thanks to support from Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle.

Essay Source: Flavia Arlotta, Inner Gardens, Exhibition catalogue (Itaca / Il Palmerino, 2025), 'For Flavia: An Inventory of Sorts' by Laura Casprini