“I was the youngest, and therefore I had to take the sheep out to graze. I drew, scribbling with charcoal, young ladies, cats, dogs…
I was born with this passion. When I grew up and got married, I drew secretly from my husband, while he was at work: I didn’t want him to see anything, because it was said that women had to cook, knit socks, but I liked playing with colours…
Someone told me that my painting was “naïve” but I didn’t understand…”
(Annunziata Scipione)
Annunziata Scipione was born in 1928 in Camerale di Tossicia (Te), at the foot of the Gran Sasso.
A farmer, the youngest of seven children, she had to dedicate herself to grazing sheep from an early age as a form of help for the family. He attended primary school until the third grade, showing great talent in drawing.
As an adult, her husband, Ettore Di Pasquale, encouraged her to work on her canvases, to which she dedicated herself in the moments free from running the house and working in the countryside. Self-taught, he began sculpting local wood in 1968 (first work “la pastorella”, a rudimentary sculpture full of poetry). From 1972 he moved on to painting, painting canvases depicting scenes of peasant life with oil colours.
Discovered by Cesare Zavattini, her great admirer, who found in her “a fundamental dialect that has the value of a created language” and who in some way compares her to Antonio Ligabue.
The artist has established herself nationally and internationally since the second half of the Seventies and is considered one of the greatest Italian naïf painters.
In 2010 Annunziata Scipione stopped painting due to health problems but continued to draw, still creating works of notable formal and chromatic impact.
Annunziata’s artistic work also constitutes a sort of encyclopedic diary of the customs, activities, secular and religious traditions of the archaic-rural society of her homeland of Abruzzo; it managed to express the cultural identity of its people, highlighting their community, aesthetic and spiritual values and at the same time expressing its own artistic, visionary and imaginative identity.
Several of her works are exhibited in the National Museum of Naïve Arts in Luzzara, alongside the masterpieces of Antonio Ligabue, of whom she is considered the artistic and spiritual heir. She participated in seven editions of the National Naïfs Award of Luzzara, being awarded in the 1977-1978 one. Two of his paintings were chosen to celebrate the Holy Year 1983-1984. Numerous participations in exhibitions and prizes; his works have been presented in important capitals of world art, such as London and Paris and appear in public and private collections and in various museums of modern and contemporary art throughout Europe. The Municipality of Tossicia has dedicated a room to her in the Ethnographic Museum which houses an important collection of the painter alongside works by Antonio Ligabue.
She died in Teramo on 24 April 2018.
