South Florida artists travel to Italian festival, hope for reciprocal visit

FARINDOLA, Italy — A 2015 invitation to the Farindola International Art Festival (FIAF) drew Boynton Beach artist Ralph Papa to a remote town in Italy’s Abruzzo region.

Seven years later, the 86-year-old plein air painter continues to return to the city of Farindola, drawn by both the landscape and his ancestral ties.

Nestled within the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park, Farindola is a medieval village of just 1,600 residents, approximately a three-hour drive from Rome. It’s known for its award-winning pecorino cheese. 

The festival, organized by Liliana Marcella and the local nonprofit Pro Loco, is hosted by British artist Paul Critchley and his wife, Helen Conlon, who have lived in the town since 2008. Critchley is known for his life-size spatial installations that explore the contents of a house and the ephemera of everyday life.  

Also visiting the region was Marusca Gatto, cultural arts director at the Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach. During the same period, she traveled with her family to her parents’ hometown of Celano, located just two hours from Farindola — highlighting the personal and artistic connections between the two regions.

“I’m honored to visit FIAF and connect with this year’s participating artists,” Gatto says. “The festival offers a unique opportunity to unite two countries and communities through art and cultural exchange.”

Gatto hopes to expand the reciprocal relationship by inviting Italian artists from the Abruzzo region to exhibit and collaborate in Palm Beach County and Delray Beach.

Papa returned this past August for his seventh visit to the city along with a group of other South Florida artists, including Debby Coles-Dobay, a Boynton Beach-based artist and art consultant with Art Moves You; Broward County-based artist Lester Salazar; and Miami artists Andrés López, Leonardo Aballe and Gustavo Roque.

This year’s festival runs from Aug. 18 through Aug. 31.

After spending three days in Rome painting and sketching at the iconic sites of the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain and the Castel Sant’Angelo on the Tiber River, en plein air, the group set up their easels in the central piazza of Farindola to capture the spirit and feel of the town, dating back to 1458, and the surrounding mountains.

For Papa, who has taught at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, The Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach and the Lighthouse Art Center in Jupiter, the return to Farindola is more than a homecoming. It is a return to his Italian heritage and his roots.

On one of his visits to Farindola, Papa learned that his grandparents came from this region, from a town called Pescaseroli, in the nearby province of L’Aquila.

“If I hadn’t been selected and gone to that festival, I might not have known my grandparents were from there,” says Papa, who grew up in an Italian neighborhood in East Harlem, N.Y. 

In Pescaseroli, Papa met long-lost cousins and other relatives from his grandparents’s side of the family.

“Besides being a beautiful and picturesque region of Italy, coming to Farindola and Pescaseroli has personal meaning for me,” he says. Papa painted the church where his grandparents were baptized, the town hall and other places that resonated with meaning for him. 

Now back in his beloved, adopted city of Farindola, Papa says he keeps returning because “it feels like home.”

Eager to put paint to canvas, the group of artists spread out on the main street in the downtown area, overlooking the eight peaks of the mountain range, and a view of the old fortress city below.

Papa, who paints with his back to his subject matter, as a way of interpreting what he sees, captured the colors and textures of the trees and mountains.

He believes the simpler the scene, the better the painting. He looks to see what he can add, what he can remove, and how he can improve the painting’s composition. He believes in the philosophy that less is more.

Instead of painting the sky a pure blue, Papa will make the sky part of the overall composition, juxtaposing colors and patterns to maximize the effect, creating the scene “in his way,” creating a signature style of spontaneity and complementary colors.

“When I come here, it’s easy for me to paint,” he says. “The scenery presents itself.” 

To familiarize the visiting artists with their city, the ProLoco group organized a group tour of the region led by Nadir Lanesi and Antonio Constantini, starting with a day trip through the winding and hairpin turns of the mountains and national park, visiting the historic walled city of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a city dating from the 11th century and known as one of the “pìu belli d’Italia.”

Damaged in a 2009 earthquake, the city is having a renaissance and resurgence, thanks in part to Daniele Kihlgren, a Swedish-Italian who created the Albergo Diffuso project to restore and revitalize the city by building a “scattered” hotel, keeping the integrity of the old architecture, and using local products and craftspeople to rebuild the city.

They also toured the old city of Farindola, its narrow cobblestone streets, four towers, picturesque panoramas, small churches and a former summer palace of the Medici family, now owned by the Farnese family. On the ceiling is a large fresco in need of repair, depicting King Solomon along with the four cardinal virtues: Temperance, justice, fortitude and prudence.  

For Coles-Dobay, the attraction was coming to a town she had heard much about from Papa, who has encouraged her to come since 2015.

“So far, I’ve fallen in love with the culture, history and the natural environment of Farindola and the Abruzzo region,” she says about her first visit to the region.

Her goal is to expand FIAF and connect artists in the Farindola Abruzzo region of Italy to artists in the South Florida arts community.

It was a similar experience for the other four artists who participated in FIAF.

Salazar, 70, raised in Key West, has painted more than 40 murals for public and private commissions and has recently come to plein air painting through Papa. He says plein air painting is personal to the artist and finds continued excitement and challenges through the medium.

Although he considers his style to be “creative realism,” when he learned there was an open space available to participate in FAIF, he jumped at the chance to travel to Europe for the first time. “I have to do this,” he said.

Cuban-born and Miami-based López, 54, who owns Artistic Illusions Painting, is known for his mural paintings as well as his studio work. His recent exhibit, titled Reflections, was on display at the Cornell Art Museum last March.

López says he is inspired by the natural beauty he sees in Farindola and is excited to capture its images on his canvases.

Aballe, a professional visual artist who came to Miami from Cuba, is also a set designer and film and television producer and has had an international career spanning more than 40 years. 

Likewise, Roque, also Cuban-born, who has a 20-year career as an artist, says he is excited about being back Italy and experiencing the beauty of Farindola. Although he visited Venice last year to paint, he says returning to Italy is a chance to revisit the country and paint something besides his home city of Miami.

With his easel in the central piazza, alongside the cobblestone streets and narrow walkways, Roque, working in acrylic, set about capturing the scene in front of him.

The journey that began 10 years ago in Farindola comes full circle this fall, as the artists’ plein air creations return to South Florida. On Sept. 25, the Cornell Art Museum will host an exhibit and panel discussion featuring the works painted during FIAF — reflecting the region’s natural beauty, cultural richness and the newly formed relationships.

With 10 percent of the proceeds reinvested into the festival and each artist donating a piece to FIAF’s permanent collection, the spirit of artistic exchange lives on. 

One such piece, Papa’s 2019 painting of the local café, Bar Orsetto, still hangs proudly on its wall — a lasting reminder of the connection between Farindola, the larger Abruzzo region and the South Florida artists who might say, as they do in Rome, veni, vidi, pinxi: I came, I saw, I painted.