La Pitturessa

Anna Paparatti is the Pitturessa: a free-spirited woman, born in Calabria, who went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where her talent for painting shone through. She has been part of more than sixty years of Italian and international contemporary art history, from the 1960s to the present day.
In 2021, Elena Del Drago organised an exhibition of her work in Rome. That same year, Dior’s artistic director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, suggested using her geometric paintings from the 1960s as the set design for Dior’s ready-to-wear show in Paris. The paintings were Il grande gioco, Pop-oca, Le jeu qui n’existe pas and Il gioco del non-sense, canvases that had remained for years in her large home on the Lungotevere in Rome.
This became the opportunity to tell her story. Against the backdrop of the artistic and cultural milieu of an Italy that no longer exists, the film draws on previously unseen material from her personal archive, rare footage, photographs and works, as well as clips from major films that have ‘hosted’ her paintings. It is a journey of rediscovery and an intimate, private portrait of Anna, as extraordinary and ironic as ever, as she experiences her artistic reawakening with amusement and astonishment.