Biography

Luisa Russo (1906-1995) was born at Lejni in the province of Torino. The father, born from parents of Russian origin, naturalized, was a well-off agronomist expert in estates and lands. Well accustomed to travel through countries, he had the habit to bring often with him the little daughter. From these first years she always brought inside her mind love for flowers colours and harmonies which she amused to repeat on her drawings. She lost father and mother when she was still young, and after some years she moved to the Ligurian Riviera, were she met her future husband. A great love started immediately, which lasted forever, and had a great influence on her art career through advices and suggestions. At the end of the war the life of every day started again,and Luisa Russo began to work as assistant by her husband dentist’s surgery. Here, due to working needs she started using materials as castings and molding plasters. Looking at these small pieces, remains of plasters, she perceived strange shapes of life, creatures of imagination.

By chance, Aldo Palladino an old teacher of the art school centre A. M. Maragliano in Genova had occasion to see that small funny pieces of plaster. He got enthusiastic and encouraged the artist to go on, giving her the first rudiments, advises, and also some tools for making ceramics. She started with first experiments about soft materials as the argil, hand kneaded and modeled. The pieces once finished had to dry and then be baked in a stove, step generally carried out by an outside specialist laboratory. Ceramics was for Luisa Russo the way to create forms of life, true or imagination of her visions, by modeling an inert grey material rebel to rules of static balance, however ready surrender to artist’s irony, passion, emotion.

Luisa Russo has never looked for pieces within the canons of perfect reliability to the model. She always wants to transmit her emotion of the moment, joyful or sad. Many real problems and tests with unfulfilled results, brought the artist to build up her own Laboratory, with a refractory bricks oven of great capacity suitable to very high temperature. She chose after several trials a ceramics very compact, based on a mix of white clay w, kaolin, and other materials with annealing point at 1250° C., Luisa Russo started by this way her artist career, devoting all herself to ceramics sculpture, without however forgetting the beloved water-color and oil painting. The first important personal exhibition is was in Rome at the art gallery "il camino" in 1962, with a warm success of public and art criticism on main newspapers. In 1963 a new personal exhibition in Genoa, by the Press Club seat. After they come several collective and personal exhibitions, invitations to take part in important contests, honorific recognitions and awards.

  • "Academy of 500" for the Arts, Literature, Sciences, Culture, Rome 1988: for the contribution to the contemporary culture, paintress, sculptress.
  • National University Toronto Dominion of Canada, degree of Counsellor for Fine Arts, 1973.
  • "Life Fellow Distinguished Honour" of World Jnana Ratna Sadhak Society.
  • A Silent World Fellowship of Culture Wisdom Unity (10.10.1984).
  • Member Regest UMC, World Union of Culture.
  • "Homo Electus Ducati Extensis", Ferrara (25.10.1980): Official member distinguished.

In the biography of Luisa Russo, we find the reviews of art critics, of contemporary authors and artists who were interested in her pieces:

  • "The artistic production, sculpture, ceramics, painting, water-colours [...] a personality with the constant factor of pure contemplation, fantastic imagination of the world [...] in the ceramics due to a poetical sensitivity the raw material seems to bring peculiar vibrations especially in the flowers compositions."
    Camillo Gigli Molinari
  • "In the ceramics art Luisa Russo mainly devoted herself to sculpture, getting over hard problems with original procedures also in the phase of annealing at great fire and small fire, obtaining surprising results. The Head of Christ, Ecce Homo, and the Angel Praying reach the intensity of the highest prayer and reveal deep emotions [...]."
    A.G. Santagata
  • "Revealing of a personal art conception [...] the range of shades expresses harmony, grace, inventive power, [...] portraits and figures which emphasize the character with the introspection of spiritual and moral gifts."
    Giacomo Migone
  • "The bottles, the flowerpots, the heads of babies, marvelous the flowers, the fruits, all realized with elegance and skill, they have the grace of the fifteenth-century Italian pieces, it’s very efficacious the force and expressiveness of Christ dying and Christ dead."
    Enrico Contardi Rhodio
  • "To approach the art of Luisa Russo means to meet a creative inspiration with a peculiar genuine and natural vitality. In her art vibrates the rushing devotion to the art"
    A.M. Secondino
  • "Images born for sculpture, with clot of clay, perceptible touches of the brush, rarely they fall in the obvious; a variety of interests, now decorative purity, now a humoural satire, with creativity and fertile characterization [...] for confirming the power to be an artist and give proof of a deep expressive charge[...]."
    Germano Beringheli