Domenica Regazzoni. Dal Legno al Suono

The volume brings together forty original works mixed media, refashioned wooden boards, sculptures, works on paper or canvas by Domenica Regazzoni that have been inspired by the art of making stringed instruments.
The artist first felt the need to realize these works in 1999, immediately after the death of her father, the great Lombard instrument maker Dante Regazzoni. The ancient Italian art of making stringed instruments was almost encyclopedic in character: a blend of architecture, sculpture and even painting in the complicated and jealously guarded secrets of the varnishes, containing that very high degree of craftsmanship that was required to turn a piece of wood into an instrument that is the soul of music: the most spiritual of the arts. The materials that Domenica Regazzoni has used to make these sculptures are spruce and maple: woods, explains the artist, that have always been preferred by master instrument makers for the construction of violins and violas.

Domenica Regazzoni was born at Bellano in the province of Lecco in 1953. From her instrument-maker father Dante Regazzoni she imbibed, from her childhood, a love for artistic work that was to lead her over the following years to discover within herself a desire to experiment with different forms of artistic expression. In the last few years her work has been aimed at exploring the elective affinities between painting, music, poetry and, most recently, sculpture.
In 1992 she illustrated Canto Segreto, a collection of poems by Antonia Pozzi published in Vanni Scheiwiller's series All'insegna del Pesce d'oro. In 1996 her collaboration with Mogol resulted in the exhibition Colore Incanto (Color Magic), a blend of painting, music and poetry staged in various Italian cities and in Tokyo, where it proved a great success with the public and the critics and where the artist returned in September 2000 to present a monograph dedicated to haiku poems published by Viennepierre. In December 1998 she inaugurated an exhibition inspired by the poetry of Lucio Dalla at the Fondazione Stelline in Milan. The association with the Bolognese singer-songwriter continued in October 2000 with Regazzoni & Dalla, staged at the Vittoriano in Rome and, more recently, in July 2001 at the former church of San Mattia Bologna, the exhibition space of the Architectural Heritage and Landscape Service of Emilia.