Printmaker, Professor, and Artist Roberta Feoli De Lucia’s connection with the press has its roots in childhood. Her GrandPa Peppino was the founder of the oldest weekly paper of the Sannio area, the Messaggio d’Oggi, and her mother took the reins becoming Director, making Roberta spend hours and hours of her early years in amongst the typography and machinery where she observed Masters in smocks transforming ink into words.
The constant magic that accompanied their gestures, the smell of coloured inks, and literally seeing the images and phrases born made Roberta fall madly in love. Adding to this, drawing lessons with her grandmother Elvira, who every week gave a young Roberta a new challenge, made it inevitable that she was going to end up in an artistic and tactile field.
After finishing art school, Roberta arrived at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, where she witnessed students with dirty hands leaving the printshop. This experience offered a flashback to seeing the aforementioned typographers at work. Thus, after completing a three-year degree in Painting, she chose to specialise in Graphic Art, where she was able to combine the stories of her land with the legends of Central America – another fascinating parallel path of her education.
Not one to limit her fields of artistic exploration, in the meantime Roberta had also graduated as an actress, and followed several courses with various directors, as well as becoming a freelance journalist in line with family tradition. All the while she continued to “get dirty” in the Stamperia, helping her to realise that the printshop was the place she was destined to stay.
During her student years also Roberta partook in an Erasmus in Granada, in which she started assisting engraving professors. This was then followed by a degree and further specialisation at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica Venezia. It was here that she decided to put an end to the rest of her endeavours, and make the Venetian printshop her staple.
Constant collaborations with artists in residence has provided the opportunity for Roberta to establish friendships with incredible Masters who have respected her role and skills, to the point of receiving a proposal from the The Boston Printmakers & Somerville’s Mixit Print Studio in 2018 for a trip to the USA as a guest artist, fully funded and aimed at her further specialisation. As a result of this, Roberta was able to attend the exclusive opening of the International Fine Print Dealers Association, meet in person and go to dinner with Susan Rostow, a printmaker and creator of the Akua Inks that form the basis of Roberta’s workshops. Furthermore, she had the opportunity to involve herself in some wonderful places such as Shepherd & Maudsleigh Studio. Roberta also became Guest Artist of the Massachusetts College Of Art And Design and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts | Tufts University.
As part of this overseas trip, she spent some time at Vermont Studio Center as a guest of founders and friends Jon Greg and Louise Von Weise. Here she was presented with the opportunity to become the first Italian to follow and obtain a diploma in less toxic engraving techniques at Zea Mays Printmaking, a printshop devoted to researching the most sustainable printmaking techniques and materials.
Roberta’s artistic research has led her to be inspired by the devils, witches, and mourners of the stories she heard growing up, and the sub-cultures transmuted by ancient religious impositions and tribal customs. Benevento, the place where she was born, is defined as “city of the Witches”.
As an artist and a human being, the basis of Roberta’s life is dedicated to sharing, and the use of images and words to tell the history of art printing and life’s joys and sorrows. Within her work, flesh bodies and hard skulls are juxtaposed in processions and memories. From a classic etching, to a drypoint on paraffin cardboard, the artist uses various techniques to tell a story; perhaps painful, perhaps concrete, but certainly respectful.
For many years, Roberta has made sustainable printing the fulcrum of her research and lessons, and today her printmaking career boasts exhibitions and courses with international galleries and universities. She continues to organise events related to printing, artist residencies, courses, appointments for institutions and associations, and aims to create sincere bonds between printers and engravers.
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