Villa Decius Association would like to invite you to the next edition of the program ‘The Gardens of Creativity’. On Sunday, 11th October 2009 at 5 p.m. an opening of Carlotta Bologna’s painting exhibition will take place. The introduction regarding the art works of this marvellous artist will be made by Zofia Weiss Nowina-Konopka. An integral part of the exhibition will be a concert of the music of Italian composers entitled ‘The Italian love at Gonzagas’ courts’ performed by a courtly band Consortium Sedinum under the art direction of Urszula Stawicka and court ballet Cracovia Danza with the choreography of Romana Agnel.
Carlotta Bologna, Italian by origin, was born on 17th January 1909 in Gandawa. In 1914 she moved to Warsaw. She graduated from Wladysław Lange boarding school for females, the Film Institute of Wiktor Bieganski (a director, an actor and her Future husband) as well as a three-year Janina Mieczynska School of Ballet. She acted in a few Polish silent movies, and then in the first talkies realized by a studio in Joinville, near Paris for an American motion picture holding company Paramount. Her achieved her first movie success in 1928 in ‘The woman who desires sin’ directed by Bieganski.
In 1930, she began studies at the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw, in the atelier of Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski. In 1935, she arrived to Cracow where she studied under the direction of Professor Wojciech Weiss. After receiving her diploma in 1938, she began her independent artwork.
During the occupation, she regained three valuable paintings of Italian Mannerist stolen from the Italian Embassy, which she stored, so as to return them to Italian authorities later on. In 1966, she organized an auction of the works of artists from Cracow in aid of Florence, which was flooded. She received Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Republica Italiana order for the bond with Poland and Italy as well as her valuable input in the art of both nations on 16-th January 1997.
The Art Society in Cracow, during the social gathering in 1959, awarded her a Bronze, and in 1977 during a charity social gathering of the painters of Cracow, she received Stanislaw Wyspianski’s medal from Professor Karol Estreicher. For many years, she worked in the Board of Directors of The Art Society in Cracow, for which she received an honorary membership of the Society.
The first painting exhibition dedicated solely to Carlotta Bologna was organized in Cracow in 1958 by the Association of Polish Artists and Designers. Since then, the imaginary spatial compositions from the early years were consistently populated by the characters originating in the tradition of commedia dell’arte.
Carlotta Bologna passed away on 27th March 2001 in Cracow. The exhibition of her paintings in Decius Villa in Cracow was organized in the year of the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birthday.
The exhibition will be open until 21st October
Entrance fee: free