Luisa Adelfio: Transcendence

Luisa Adelfio: Transcendence presents the artist’s paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the last five years. A working artist since 1984, Adelfio imbues her artistic language with subtle references to Classical architecture, Renaissance panel painting, and Surrealism. With an emphasis on form, color, and materiality, she juxtaposes celestial cycles with daily life in a calibrated and compelling equilibrium.

Organized by the Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center, Transcendence is presented in both the Anne Noland Edwards Gallery and the William M. Grace Community Gallery. The Edwards Gallery features luminous abstract paintings on linen and panel, rendered in oil, graphite, and both silver and gold leaf, which evoke profound connections between the home and the heavens. The Grace Gallery presents works on paper from Adelfio’s compelling Corona Chronicles series, portraying domestic objects, rendered in pastel on newspaper, in dialogue with jarring headlines from Italian and American newspapers published during the global pandemic.

Luisa Adelfio holds a BA in sculpture and art history from Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA) and an MFA from the Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan, Italy). She has had solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries in New York, Washington, Oaxaca (Mexico), Santiago (Chile), Bogotá (Colombia), and Monreale (Italy). Her work is held in the collections of the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA), the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation (New York, NY), and the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (Oaxaca, Mexico). She lives and works in Norfolk, VA, and Palermo, Italy.