Anticoli Corrado has been buzzing for a few months thanks also to two Australians who decided to move to this beautiful village in the Aniene Valley which was once one of the major artistic centers around Rome.
Until a year ago, Rita Colozzi and Ralph Westbury lived in Canberra in Australia but they needed more social relationships and to feel part of a community. Rita is originally from Pignataro Interamna and Esperia, two municipalities in southern Lazio, while Ralph is of Scottish origin, from the McLean clan in the Highlands.
In Australia there was no concept of square, of a meeting point where everyone knows each other and where it is possible to socialize in a light way, but also the place where the sense of community is born. And in fact, today part of their goal is to transform their Italian home into a 'piazza' where artists and travelers can stay.
They had decided to come to Italy and started searching the web for several months until they found a house in Anticoli Corrado: “we didn't know Anticoli Corrado and its history. We bought Villa Ulivella Morgantini (450 m2 and 1 hectare of garden to clean and renovate) on the internet without coming to see the house and in 10 months we completed the move, moved in and started the restoration work”.
They had made their first trip to Italy in 2015 to discover Rita's roots. She was raised in the Italian way of life in what was once called Sydney's Little Italy. The journey of the roots changed their lives, for Rita it was to experience once again the emotions she felt as a girl but she did not feel a particular bond with the countries of origin. But the choice of the small town was the first step.
And it seems that a series of coincidences, perhaps fate, led them to choose this house: “I had duties in Australia and had to look after my sick mother. Then we started looking for a house. We bought it from the Morgantini family but before it was the villa of a noble English lady, Anna Greenfield, who had married Cino Bacchiani and had an intense social life. It even seems that Mussolini often had lunch in this villa. The whole story is told in the biography of his son Ronald E.H. Waring who dedicated some stories to her set right in the villa.”.
Daughter Maya remained in Brisbane in Australia with her work as an animator of animated drawings (one of the few specialized in hair movement), but Anticoli Corrado's house is already full of grandchildren and visitors who come to visit them.
So on Sunday I went to Anticoli Corrado to get to know them and to meet the deputy mayor Massimo Fabbi for the Town Ambassador project of the Metropolitan Area of Rome: “art seems to have returned to Anticoli Corrado for a couple of years. Studios of artists such as the Iranian ceramist Azadeh Shirmast and the English painter have opened…. Then above all the professor Eclario Barone and his wife Silvia are the true cultural animators of our rebirth.”
The occasion was the Installations event organized at their home by Eclario Barone and Oriana Impei with the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome as part of the Portraits on Stage Festival. The festival is organized by Gloria Sapio and Maurizio Repetto of the Settimo Cielo association which also manages the La Fenice theater in Arsoli.
The afternoon will be opened by a performance by Cinzia Pietribiasi and Francesco Straface, a dance between a dancer and a small vehicle on wheels where man and machine create a work of colour. A reflection on the relationship between man and machine in an environment where the crystalline air and the splendid landscape of the Simbruini Mountains in the background lead us to reflect more on the relationship between art and nature.
After getting involved by Luca Pastore in a game where I created three-dimensional signs in a digital world with viewers, I got lost among the musical notes of the concert by Soichi Ichikawa and Rosario Sarcià from the A. Corelli Institute in Rome.
And with the notes of Bartok, as the blue light of the evening arrived, Jessica Pintaldi hidden in a red sack drew living sculptures on the lawn of the garden next to the two musicians. The bright red of the bag, the green of the grass and the blue of the sky gave special emotions.
I'm not sure what Rita and Ralph expect from Italy, they were brave to change their whole lives in a few months, but we think a true artists' living room has been born. A center that can become a navel for Anticoli Corrado.
Ad majora to Rita Colozzi and Ralph Westbury, the new Town Ambassadors of Anticoli Corrado!
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