ALTROVE – Between skin and pigments Tuesday, February 10, 7:00 p.m. Spazio Merlo Via Carlo Emery 61 Saxa Rubra, Raffaella Franci meets Antonia Leonardi’s Altrove
As soon as you cross the threshold of Spazio Merlo in Via Carlo Emery 61, visitors are struck by a range of bright colors, pure pigment designed to fill the eye, in a fluid succession of painting, sculpture, and photography. This is the first impression of Altrove, the exhibition of sculpture, painting, and photography by artists Antonia Leonardi and Raffaella Franci, curated by Chiara Castria and Paola Gambino of the SUarte gallery. The location is near Saxa Rubra, a space that bears the memory of the ancient Flaminia consular road (220 BC) with artifacts crossed by the tracks of carts.
On display are thirty works, the mysterious colored spheres, the Altrove (Elsewhere), created by Antonia Leonardi, an artist from Catania, accompanied by photos by Raffaella Franci. “The body of work, whose research focuses on cosmic dynamics, arrives at an extreme formal synthesis through the relationship between painting and sculpture,” comments critic Andrea Baffoni. “It is elsewhere that I listen to my silences,” reveals Antonia Leonardi, explaining both the works and the title of the exhibition.
The spheres were first presented at the Mam’s in Sassoferrato, where some of them remain on permanent display. In Rome, the exhibition is enriched by the dialogue with Raffaella Franci’s photographs. After presenting a solo exhibition in Rome of photos inspired by the 500th anniversary of Perugino, Franci here highlights the human dimension of Altrove (Elsewhere), as Leonardi’s works are called.
The photographs focus strongly on the artist’s hands, an implicit tribute to the human side of the work as a reference to the intimate dialogue between physical action and the mental genesis of the work of art. Altrove expresses the sense of humanity reaching out to the universe, to which the artist entrusts the task of telling us who we are.
Altrove brings painting, sculpture, and photography into dialogue through the works of Antonia Leonardi and Raffaella Franci. Leonardi’s chromatic spheres, a synthesis of matter and silence, evoke cosmic dynamics and a humanity reaching out towards infinity. Franci’s photographs enhance the human dimension, focusing on the creative gesture and the intimate relationship between body and thought.
The exhibition thus becomes a space for listening and relating between matter, vision, and the universe.
Among the guests expected at the exhibition are actress Laura Morante and director Vincenzo Alfieri.
The artists
Antonia Leonardi. A painter and sculptor, born in Catania, she began her artistic journey in the visual arts with her mother Lucia, also a painter and sculptor.
“… as a child, following in the footsteps of my mother, my teacher, I drew, painted, and touched clay with passion. Over the years, I have worked intermittently on this wonderful art. I have pursued others. When I was very young, alongside painting and sculpture, I trod the boards to sing the heroines of operas. But my great passion was visual art… so I devoted myself entirely to it.”
She attended high school and then the Academy in Catania, studying singing and piano. She began painting at a young age but started exhibiting in 2016 with a solo show in Orvieto at Palazzo dei Sette entitled “Il Rumore del Silenzio” (The Sound of Silence). In 2017, she presented her solo show “Silente Separazione” (Silent Separation) at Palazzo della Corgna in Città della Pieve. In the same year, she participated in the International Contemporary Art Fair in Innsbruck, presented by the La Telaccia gallery in Turin. In 2019, she presented a solo exhibition in Trevi and, since 2020, she has participated in several group exhibitions organized by the associations “Spazio 121 Arte” and “Casa degli Artisti.” In 2022, she exhibited at the “Vernice Art Fair” in Forlì, and in 2023, with the exhibition ‘Silenzi’ (Silences), she joined the stable of artists at the SUarte Gallery in Rome. With the SUarte Gallery, she participated in “Arte in Nuvola” (Art in the Cloud) in Rome in 2024 and 2025. On March 8, 2025, her solo exhibition entitled “Altrove” (Elsewhere) opened at the MAM’S contemporary art gallery in Sassoferrato, where one of her works (“Altrove”) is on permanent display. In the summer of 2025, the same exhibition was staged to great public acclaim in the prestigious halls of Palazzo Corgna in Città della Pieve.
Raffaella Franci, Photographer. Born in Rome, she followed in her family’s footsteps, belonging to a family of musicians. She combined her classical studies with piano lessons under the guidance of her father, the conductor Maestro Carlo Franci.
From a very young age, she began working as a journalist for many Italian television stations and has made numerous documentaries for public and private companies in Italy and abroad, as well as reports for RAI International in New York. For over 15 years, she has organized concerts and large-scale opera productions with world-renowned orchestras, conductors, and soloists: “Aida at the Pyramids” in Giza, the opening concerts of the 1990 World Cup, ‘Aida’ in the great stadium of Singapore, Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” in St. Peter’s Basilica concelebrated with Pope John Paul II, concerts at the Quirinale for heads of state, and tours in Spain by the National Orchestra of Santa Cecilia. Just to name a few.
Over the years, my many travels have allowed me to cultivate a passion for photography, and in every part of the world, including underwater, I have captured and photographed a considerable number of moments, emotions, landscapes, places, and faces.
For his solo exhibition entitled “Due Orizzonti” (Two Horizons), he selected 64 photographs taken over a period of thirty years around the world from his considerable collection. The exhibition was staged in the prestigious setting of the Angelica Library in Rome, in the enchanting rooms of Palazzo della Corgna in Città della Pieve, Palazzo dei Sette in Orvieto, and Palazzo della Cultura in Catania, always arousing great interest from the public and the press and receiving appreciation and acclaim from important figures in the cultural world.
Other notable projects include “Risveglio” (Awakening), a series of photographs of archaeological finds discovered in an Etruscan tomb in Umbria, a photo shoot dedicated to important international fashion brands, and “I colori del divin pittore” (The Colors of the Divine Painter), a project dedicated to Perugino on the 500th anniversary of the painter’s death.
Altrove is not a place to be reached, but a threshold to be crossed: a space of silence and matter in which art becomes listening and the human is measured against the infinite.
