Isabella Ducrot
Tender Pots
2023
Pastel, pigment, silver, and collage on paper
38 1/2 x 56 3/4 inches
98 x 144.5 cm
Isabella Ducrot (b. 1931, Naples, Italy) is an artist and writer with a career spanning four decades. Ducrot’s oeuvre is deeply rooted in an extraordinary and enduring interest in fabrics, that is central to both her pictorial works and writings. Sourced during extensive travels over the course of her life, Ducrot has amassed an exquisite collection of fabric that spans centuries and bear origins from across Asia and Eastern Europe – including Russia, Turkey, China, India and Tibet. She considers these fabrics as an art form in and of themselves, to which she has dedicated herself to many years of focused study and views essential to her education. Employing diverse media – including pencil, pastel, ink and watercolor, which she applies to rare papers – her works compress an array of cultural references, ranging from philosophy to folklore and textile weaving. At both intimate and expansive scales, her work reflects a fascination with repetition, form, and color, informed by the rare textiles in her collection. Ducrot’s work was the subject of a recent solo exhibition, Profusione at le Consortium Museum, Dijon and her installation, titled Big Aura was featured at the Dior Haute Couture SS 2024 runway show at the Musee Rodin, Paris. Ducrot has presented solo exhibitions at Petzel Gallery, New York, Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Sadie Coles, London and Standard (Oslo), Oslo. Ducrot lives and works in Rome.
“You can make a drawing of two people in love, but the tenderness doesn’t always come out. I’m trying to make tenderness come out, tenderness and the possibility of touch.”
—Isabella Ducrot
Isabella Ducrot, Italian Pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennale
1931 Born in Naples. Ducrot has been living and working in Rome for many years.
In her extensive travels she developed a particular interest in fabrics from countries east of Europe and began studying the many differences in the textile traditions of China, India, Turkey and Central Asia. Over the years she has amassed a collection of rare fabrics of historical interest, and has long used textiles in her own work.
1989 Ducrot creates 12 paintings made up of panels that incorporated fragments of an Andean fabric dating back one thousand years. She subsequently spent two years creating a rich series of tapestries around a recurring motif in Ottoman culture, the cintamani pattern.
1990 Begins using paper to create a series of large drawings and monotypes in black and white.
1993 Ducrot presents a large tapestry at the 1993 Venice Biennale that is today part of the collection of the Contemporary Art Museum of Gibellina, Sicily.
Isabella Ducrot, L’Arte non è cosa nostra at the Italian Pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale
2002 Ducrot creates a series of paper tapestries entitled “Memorie di una terra”, from memories of a trip to Afghanistan, which were exhibited at the Milan State Archives. A large collage of fabric, paper and paint was exhibited and acquired by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome, while a large pastel on silk is part of the collection of Rome’s National Gallery of Modern Art.
2005 Ducrot creates two mosaics for the Piazza Vanvitelli metro station in Naples.
2008 Solo exhibitition at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art entitled “Variazioni” and published “Text on Textile”.
2011 Invited to the Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion.
2014 Solo exhibition at The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome titled "Bende sacre”.
2015 Invited by Achille Bonito Oliva to exhibit her installation “Effimero” at Archaeological Museum in Naples.
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, No Words, Petzel, New York, 2024
2019 Solo exhibition "La bella terra (Landscapes)" at Gisela Capitain
Solo exhibition "Big Aura" at Capitain Petzel
2021 Solo exhibition "Tendernesses (Figures Embracing)" at Gisela Capitain
Solo exhibition at San Giuseppe Delle Scalze a Ponecorvo, Naples
2022 Presentation at Art Basel Unlimited of the Arazzi series, large installation of pattern works
Solo exhibition "Tendernesses (Figures Embracing)" at STANDARD (OSLO)
2023 Solo exhibition "Other Things" at Sadie Coles
2024 Solo exhibition "No Words" at Petzel
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, Art Basel Unlimited 2022
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, Zweigstelle Capitain I, Rome, 2022
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, 2021
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, San Giuseppe delle Scalze, Napoli, 2021
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2019
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, In Tibet, Spazio Parlato, Palermo, 2018
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, Omaggio a Mishima, Stage design for Teatro Palladium, Rome, 2016
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, Effimero, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, 2015
Installation view, Isabella Ducrot, L’Arte non è cosa nostra, Italian Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011
