MARISA ZATTINI was born in Forlì on October 13, 1956. Sign of the zodiac: Libra ascendant Scorpio.
She graduated with honors in February 1981 at the Faculty of Architecture of Florence University with a dissertation on Restoration and Consolidation of monuments, and for three years occupied the position of Assistant to Professor Lorenzo Nizzi Grifi. Registered in the Chamber of Architects of Forlì-Cesena, she was a member of the Territorial Commission and Roll Counsellor of Forlì-Cesena and Rimini for two terms (from 1981 to 1991) and was a free-lance professional until 1992.
As an artist-painter, ceramist, poet, she began staging exhibitions in public premises in Italy and abroad (Sweden, England, Germany and Greece) in 1976 and has published monographic catalogues containing many of her poems.
She is currently Artistic Director of IL VICOLO Art Section of Cesena – a company established together with architect Augusto Pompili, her husband – and has organized over two hundred contemporary art exhibitions, over forty of which in the city of Cesena alone (Civic Art Gallery, Rocca Malatestiana and Former Pescheria Gallery). Her artistic direction of the Cesena Civic Art Gallery (Palazzo del Ridotto) – on the basis of having won two National Competitions –distinguished cultural proposals in the district between 1993 and 2000.
She conceived the idea and organized, between 2001 and 2005, the ‘networking’
of the exhibition entitled Rocche & Scultori Contemporanei - with the support of the Emilia Romagna Region, of the 3 Provinces (Forlì-Cesena, Ravenna and Bologna) and of 7 Municipalities of the Romagna Region – dedicated to major contemporary sculptors and staged in some of Romagna’s most famous historical Fortresses. She is also Art Director of 12 Series for the IL VICOLO sections Books Division [Publisher] – dedicated to contemporary Art, nonfiction, fantasy literature, poetry, history of the district. She makes films and documentaries – as director and in charge of editing – for exhibitions conceived by her and for artists and contemporary poets. She has also organized special events, with the reacquisition of works commissioned from and made by invited artists, implementing public collections for Public Institutes and Banks.
Among the most significant, we can recall: Omaggio a Melozzo (1994), Homo Faber (1996), L’Ebbrezza di Noè (2003), IL DIAVOLO & L’ACQUA SANTA - Tarocchi Fantastici (2008-2009), 1912-2012 GIOVANNI PASCOLI - Un mito del Novecento (2012).
She is Artistic Director of “GRAPHIE”, a quarterly Art and Literature journal, founded in 1998, distributed on a subscription basis and in a number of bookshops around Italy. She has also conceived and organized numerous literary and artistic competitions at district and national level. Among these, we can recall the “GRAPHIE” Narrative Competition, (eight editions), and Scrittori in Erba – Fiabe per il terzo millennio (Budding Writers – Fairy-Tales for the third millennium) (three editions) in conjunction with a number of Romagna Municipalities.
Since 2006, she has begun an acknowledgement-artistic investigation as ‘ethnologist-entomologist’ into identity/alterity which resulted, in 2007, in a first event for the Banca Popolare dell’Emilia Romagna, entitled L’Elogio della figura - Identità & Alterità and then, in 2008, in the event of national standing,
IL DIAVOLO & L’ACQUASANTA - Tarocchi fantastici, for the town of Sarsina,
to mark the thousand year celebrations of its Basilica Cathedral, both organized in conjunction with Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums.
Always on identity and philosophical reflections tied to the topic of voids and solids, she organized an original triple exhibition entitled DOPPIO PANICO! - L’arte di vivere (2009), Metamorphosi (2011), Autoritratto (2013) involving 33 local artists who created sculptures, ceramics and photographic works. Some of these art-works have been included in the setting of the recent film by Luca Guadagnino, Suspiria.
In 2013 she received the award of ‘Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana’ from the Prefect of Forlì-Cesena, conferred by the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano – for her achievements in the field of the arts.
In 2014 the exhibition MUSTER // TRAME innesti europei has been hosted in Kassel, at the Kreishaus and inside the Oratorium of San Sebastiano in Forlì.
In 2014 and 2015 the traveling exhibition ‘Di-segni’ o dell’indole della Res has been hosted in the Modern ArtMuseum at Ca’ la Ghironda (Zola Predosa, Bologna), Bertinoro (Rocca Vescovile, Museo Interreligioso), Santarcangelo di Romagna (Grotta monumentale) and Gallarate (Teatro del Popolo).
In October 2015 the series of artworks Ali selvatiche had been hosted inside the public library ‘Maria Gioia’ in Cervia (Ravenna).
A selection of these last two series of artworks was chosen for a one-man show, called ‘Di-segni’ o delle Trasmutazioni in Athen, at the Italian Culture Institute and at TECHNOHOROS Art Gallery.
In 2017 the exhibition Agricoltura Celeste had been hosted in four different Italian public spaces: Magazzino del Sale ‘Torre’ (Cervia); Biblioteca Civica ‘G. Tartarotti’ (Rovereto); Rocca Malatestiana (Montefiore Conca) and at the Biblioteca civica ‘Gambalunga’ - Sale antiche (Rimini). In summer 2017 more than 40 artworks has been on display at the Fachsenfeld Castle, in Germany. In 2018 the personal exhibition METAMORPHICA, set up in the Mosque Yeni Camii in Thessaloniki (Greece), and moved to Italy, in Cesena, inside of Sala Piana in Biblioteca Malatestiana and in San Zenone’s Church.
The reiternated research on the Human/Nature relationship and a deep-rooted reference to the Kabbalah have led the artist to completing the project Alberi - eretici | ermetici set up in 2018 in Forlì, in the fifteenth-century Oratorio di San Sebastiano, then moved to Casa Cava, in Matera in 2019, to Sasso Barisano, on the occasion of ‘Matera European Capital of Culture 2019’.
Also in 2019 she set up the solo exhibition Alchemica - Trasmutazioni tra Arte e Natura, curated by Emanuela Fiori, in the eighteenth-century Farmacia del Museo Nazionale in Ravenna.
The exhibition Alberi - eretici | ermetici was then moved to the Galleria Comunale d’Arte in Cesena (Palazzo del Ridotto) in 2020, at the same time as the installation Alberi – The Aleph Beth of Nature initially set up in the Chiesa della Natività, in Rome, then in the Church of Santa Cristina, in Cesena. In May 2021, in Fontanellato (Parma) in the Labirinto della Masone, the solo exhibition Labirintica - In limine Dedalus was inaugurated, curated by Maddalena Casalis, which remained open until March 2022: an exhibition consistin of 100 labyrihths on gold leaf, the core of 100 Chinese prayers.
In 2021, Hermetica - Metamorphosi fra Nigredo & Albedo, curated by Matteo Ferrari, was set up in the sixteenth-century Antica Farmacia at the Camaldoli Monastery. Also curated by Matteo Ferrari, in 2021, Alberi - The Aleph Beth of Nature was set up in the Holy Spirit Chapel at the Camaldoly monastery, then - in 2022 - in Monteripido at the Convent of San Francesco del Monte (Baratta Hall), curated by Giulio Michelini.
In 2022, on the occasion of the celebrations of Federico da Montefeltro’s six hundredth anniversary, at the San Leo Fortress, her exhibition Botanica Celeste - Nel segno di Federico da Montefeltro, was curated by Fabrizio Parrini.
During the same year, the installation Alberi - La foresta che è in noi, curated by the Director Serena Ciliani, was set up in the Refectory Hall at the Abbey of Pomposa. In the summer of 2023 she completed the project Human/Nature – started in the summer of 2022 – with the installation Alberi – Alle origini del mondo, also curated by Serena Ciliani, in the Abbey of Pomposa.
In 2023 she was invited to take part in the collective exhibition DOVE ABITA L’UOMO. Luoghi, relazioni, intrecci, in the Church of Santa Maria dell’Angelo in Faenza, curated by Giovanni Gardini.
In 2024 in Santabago (Santarcangelo) she had the solo exhibition Agricoltura Celeste, and in Ravenna, at Galleria Pallavicini22, one called Anatomie Notturne, curated by Roberto Pagnani.
In the summer of 2024 in the town of Pavullo nel Frignano, in the Galleria Contemporanea at Palazzo Ducale, her solo exhibition Ibridazione, curated by Simona Negrini, will be inaugurated.
In 2025, the exhibition Alberi - Oltre il visibile curated by Remo Forchini, will be hosted in Nomi's Granaio
All exhibitions are documented by monographic catalogues and videos published by
IL VICOLO Editore.
Among those who have addressed her artistic work: Mario De Micheli, Giorgio Seveso, Floriano Bodini, Rossana Bossaglia, Maria Grazia Morganti, Domenico Montalto, Luigi Riceputi, Renato Turci, Andrea Brigliadori, Giorgio Ruggeri, Nicola Micieli, Roberta Bertozzi, Antonio Bertoli, Gabriella Baldissera, Chiara Settefonti, Loredano Matteo Lorenzetti, Giuliana Pagnoni, Franca Mazzei, Giovanni Ciucci, Enrico Bertoni, Veronica Crespi, Gian Ruggero Manzoni, Janus, Gianfranco Lauretano, Pier Guido Raggini, Riccardo Belloni, Laura Piro, Maddalena Casalis, Davide Brullo, Vittorio D’Augusta, Giorgio Di Genova, Carlo Franza, Emanuela Fiori, Mons. Jean Marie Gervais, Giorgio Vulcano, Serena Ciliani, C. Guidi, Domenico Settevendemie, Angela Fabbri, Loris Innocenti, P. Matteo Ferrari, P. Giulio Michelini, Luca Maggio, P. Alessandro Barban, Marco Cassuto Morselli, Andrea Pompili, Giorgio Cozzolino, Fabrizio Parrini, Giovanni Gardini, Roberto Pagnani, Simona Negrini.