In a brief autobiographical note kept today by her husband Umberto, Almina Dovati Fusi tells how her enthusiasm for art charted her life from an early age. Born in Carrara, Almina Dovati Fusi enrolled in 1939 in the Free Course of the Nude at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, directed by the artist Felice Carena at that tune. The course lasted only three months, not enough to become a part of the city’s artistic life, but sufficient to establish a very close relationship. Her love for Florence and determination to continue her artistic career led her to settle permanently in the Tuscan capital in the post-war years. In this period, she painted and drew many city views, especially of the Porta Romana area where she lived at that time. These images were always accompanied by a "bit" of nature: trees, gardens, flowers, brief views of greenery that left glimpses of her still vivid childhood memories of the countryside. In her later years, nature would be the center of her artistic vision, also explored only in fragments yet assuming deep metaphorical meanings. At the end of the 1950s, she decided to take up engraving, with the plate becoming her ideal sheet of paper. As she herself said, etchings became the most suitable means for expressing the poetry of her inner world. The meeting that took place in those years with the Pistoia artist Francesco Chiappelli was certainly important. From this relationship – which developed into a true friendship, Dovati acquired an unquestionable mastery of engraving techniques, thus identifying precise and definitive choices in line with her sensibility. In 1961, she exhibited her first works at the Galleria Vigna Nuova, attracting widespread interest. In 1968, she was invited to be on the committee for the 2nd International Graphic Arts Biennial at Palazzo Strozzi. She was then invited to exhibit at the next event in 1972.
(If the Magnolia were Black), As with all of Dovati’s works, direct observation of reality was crucial although a dreamlike vision immediately took precedence. The apparent domestic and everyday dimension of her subjects is reversed in a world rich in strong patterns and secret suggestions. Almina Dovati Fusi found her favorite subjects in the world of nature. Indeed, they constant themes usually dealt with flowers, roots, trees, and leaf systems. However, different sensations emerge in each of these images, in sensing that the most secret of lives are revealed. Accordingly, it turns out that the magnolia’s black petals allude to the soul’s secret movements that awaken in the recesses of memory. The mark is very fine, subtle, and fluid, which thickens to create the velvety black of the magnolia petals, be so black in how it thins out into graceful and delicate but overwhelmingly vital forms.
mm 350x250
(Meeting of Forms), There are flowers, leaves, and shells, but the foreground presence of a now bare tree trunk seemingly underscores a transient fragile beauty, yet one that still rises upward in extreme yearning. This "malignant" nature gave Dovati ideas for other conceptions, perhaps the warning suggested by Mina Gregori. "Another recurring theme is represented by scenarios of death, of apocalyptic (atomic?) vegetative upheavals, of centuries-old roots, and of surviving defoliated trees. We must comprehend the warning of this disturbance expressed by marks and not by words "(M. Gregori, in various authors, Acqueforti e disegni di Almina Dovati Fusi, Florence, Tip. B. Pochini, 1998).
mm 345x245
(Superimposition No. 3), This series of seven engravings was made in the early 1980s. The artist re-used previously etched plates, a method that can lead to a double reading. On the one hand, there is a sort of communication anxiety that does not allow for interruptions, an unbroken story via renewed, rethought, and perfectly reunited marks. On the other, the then fully mature artist indulged in a graphic virtuosity that only a sure mastery of the technical means can be achieved. This mastery of the mark leads to the mind working perfectly with the imagination and, in these works, indicates the realization of a harmony capable of recapturing observations from the past to be woven into dialogues with the future.
mm 350x250
(Superimposition No. 4), It is difficult to decipher in Almina Dovati Fusi’s cultural references and friendships in all of her work. Mina Gregori wrote that the artist who left a deep mark in her art was her teacher Felice Carena. "His imprint remained in the web of signs, seeking their chiaroscuro definition” (M. Gregori, in various authors, Acqueforti e Disegni di Almina Dovati Fusi (exhibition catalog), Florence, Tip B. Pochini, 1998). For Antonio Paolucci, one may instead speak of the cultural suggestions given by " Böcklin’s visionary romanticism, for example, but also the charm of suspended time in Morandi’s silent lives" (A. Paolucci, in various authors, Acqueforti di Almina Dovati Fusi, Florence, Tip B. Pochini, 1983, page 9). It is not difficult to think of Asian graphics, the Japanese art of Ukiyo-e, or the symbolist poetry that investigates the eternal mystery of life. In Sovrapposizione n. 4, all the problems of contextualization re-emerge. Although starting from a real figure, the series uses a language that reaches a kind of abstraction given by the superimposed images by the specific process. There is almost a desire to transfer the real figure, once fixed on the plate, inside another hemisphere of knowledge reachable only by way of symbolic and metaphorical elements, constructed from a language that responds only to its interiority.
mm 350x250
(Movement in White), The image of the subject was among the artist’s most treasured. In a vertical composition, the flowers are assembled with measured passages of gray, from the dense blacks of the stems, which seem to continuously trace upward, to the white of certain petals that create an abstract, diaphanous atmosphere. The marks are once again the true protagonist of the work - confident, vibratory marks that moves incisively, fixing visual images on the plate, later reworked by the most unpredictable sensory perceptions.
mm 450x170
(Album leaf), For her solo show Come gioielli at the Marucelliana Library in Florence, Vittoria Corti spoke about Almina Dovati’s artistic career, dividing all her work into three periods: first, painting; second, drawing; and third, engraving. Her drawings anticipated the themes chosen for her etchings, pursuing a drawing technique with obsessive dedication, continuously pinning up her sketches, the small sheets of paper on which she drew during her walks in the country. Foglio d’album suggests these moments with three plates that take note of the flowers of our fields. However, their natural environment no longer exists. The framing is almost photographic; the objective focuses only on the intertwining leaves and the explosion of corollas.
mm 140x350
(Movement), The perfection of these natural forms is exalted by the moving leaves and fragile flowers, almost in a search for rhythm. Almina Dovati was a great music lover and played the violin. Critics frequently highlighted this musical aspect as a fundamental characteristic in her work.
mm 175x245
(In the mystery of the woods), Even the titles of works can evoke hidden meanings beyond the images to which they are destined. A wood is often among the artist's subjects, with trees becoming the only inhabitants, interpreters of the soul’s secrets. In the eternal perfection of its innumerable forms, nature opens up in clearings defined by a chiaroscuro game of the brightest whites and the deepest blacks. The branches are bare, twisted. Some are broken, while others stretch upwards still. A human presence does not appear but gets flustered in the uneasy wooded twilight.
mm 175x245
(Country dreamed), In Dovati's art, the definitive choice of engraving almost reaffirms the longstanding primacy of drawing in Tuscan. It coincided with her abandonment of the human figure, with shells, roots, and trunks along with flowers and leaves bursting with vitality were witnesses to this absence of humanity. in this work as well, there is an obvious reference to the mountains in the countryside near Carrara, with a vestige of civilization given by the ancient, hilltop village on which the fine texture of the marks and of the grays deposit the memories of a time long past. The town’s solitary nature remains suspended between reality and memories, yet the sense of solitude once again implies wonder and emotion.
mm 195x250
(Memory of a Garden), Three plates in sequence representing trees and a road running through the undergrowth. Once again, reminiscences are concentrated in the story’s notes. the plate’s title transports the images beyond time and space into a garden of remembrance.
mm 170x165
(Fantasy no. 1). Set of seven plates dated the late 1980s. The title always relates to Dovati’s favorite themes. They are floral fantasies interweaving leaves, stems, and petals, into the white and black contrasts made from a very well-defined mark, the result of the technical knowledge now achieved by then in this expressive medium.
mm 340x200
(Fantasy no. 7), This plate is the last in the Fantasia series. which was limited to fifteen copies, the same as for all her other works whose editions never exceeded this number.
mm 350x250