Sara Guazzelli
A great part of Federica’s artworks has to do with magical attraction to the stormy night, shaken by thunders and lightning. Another issue is the electrical blue that we can find in all her production. Federica’s blue, even if dark, is not gloomy but quite exciting, therefore dynamic. Her painting, both in colours and shapes, seems to escape from any kind of stasis. All is movement: also her huge lunar nude reminds to the bend of the spine, the sparkling of the sea in the night. Nearly all of painting in general is static: there are only few painters who aim to depict movement on the canvas and successfully do it. Federica likes large unlimited spaces, maybe only the glancing electrical track of the lightning makes us feel the immensity of the vault of heaven. The lightning, in a moment, shakes the daily routine, an act of courage, more appreciated by those who feel suffocating by the routine….Carole Massagrande, writer
The artist’s landscapes are not classical, but reviews the cities stressing the changes they have gone through the centuries, and in particular the last 50 years. Resulting with a view as in a trompe l’oeil which would compete with our glorious past masters, in “New York” we can find a perfect synthesis of post-industrial construction which brought to build huge “concrete monsters”. A strong feeling as well as a sense of anxiety, even if the view opens to an open space where there shouldn’t be any senses of suffocating that here, nevertheless, remains. At the same time she creates “Electric-City” where the sky, always dark, is ripped by a lightning that lights up the city in the night; here we can see through the buildings as if they were made of glass instead of concrete.Gianni Gallinaro, art critic
[…] In her, as for all artists, painting is a tool to look into herself as well as to communicate. A way of focusing and visualize through shapes and colours the images which belong no longer to a physical time but more to a soul time. For example “Electrical Storm”: looking at it I don’t think about a radio description of a weather event “that lightning stroke on the city of New York at 17.32, at the beginning of the match between Los Angeles Lekers and Chicago Bulls, in that moment….”, but about an event that, if so often depicted, is for Federica the symbol of a borderline between the rush, the commitments to be fulfilled as well as their demand of time and energy, and the need of quiet. “Lightning” is a stop to dynamism of the daily routine and thus a strong way to regain oneself and a dimension that is slipping away through an electrical shock, which immediately reverses the situation, letting the artist find a shelter within her interior space, where there is peace, happiness and new Energy. Her brush touches the surface of the canvas, never aggressively, as if it wishes to talk about things that have never been mentioned before, but rather soft, light, sometimes gloomy, even “touchy” and never in relief to avoid any excess of material. Lightning or aerial perspectives of overseas cities place the artist with her easel directly in the air, as if she was watching and painting from the sky. This matrix associates a number of her paintings and shows an attentive personality able to capture events, both natural or personal, able to deprive them of any tragic and painful aspects and give them back to the audience in their scenic side. This feature, that can be unnoticed, is instead of a great importance because, unknown to the artist herself, places her way of painting in a typical modus pingenti of many painters of all times, and thus entitles her to be among those who paint. From Pompei to Posillipo, from the Alpes to Paestum etc all artists have worked with “views”. Some time has passed, things have changed and they feel the urgency of expressing their feelings by borrowing from nature an event with which they identify themselves and then represent it. Here is the “view”. Therefore, in Federica’s paintings there is more “ancient” than “new”, the ancient human being, who still feels the healthy need to represent himself through an event with which he feels in vibrancy. Now, our wish is that Federica goes on expressing herself this way in the future, with a palette of colours, some of which yet to be used, but that her paintings can let us already perceive.Aldo Aytano, art critic and fine arts professor
“…Federica Filippelli presents a body of work born after a journey to the USA, that shows the shock caused by the encounter with the sensations of the huge spaces of the American continent and the controlled order of the Tuscan landscape, full of history and harmony. Here the parameters are Lucca and the sparkling of the lights in the cities, the rectangular peaks of the skyscrapers and the soft ellipse of the Amphitheatre; the two memories overlap, the experiences mix up, while a weird light contaminates both landscapes.”Antonella Serafini, curator (from the catalogue of the show “Punti di Vista”.)
To Federica lightning is a sublime concentration – a mix of pleasure and terror – of Energy at its primordial state, a violent invitation to catch the moment, in a time that stops to watch just like we do. As a union of opposites, tragic temporary separation of the elements, Lightning is the chosen space for the most spectacular events. Something that wishes to shake the man from the grey-ness of his days; from the Weather which is the only thing that he cannot control with his will. Lightning is Nature that rises against itself, the hand that Heaven offers to the man, so that he does the same.Marco Palamidessi, art critic