A Lifetime of Political Action in Art
Ever since her childhood, Cristina Biaggi has felt the call to be an artist. Her career has spanned decades, in parallel with the modern women’s movement, embracing a diversity of media from cast bronze to paper collage. Inspired by a sense of justice and activism, she has lived a life committed to promoting peace and justice for all living creatures of the world.
Cristina was born in Switzerland, and her first language was French. Raised in Italy until 1948, she then moved to Grandview with her mother, brother Gianni and sister, Marina, and acquired a third language, English. As a student at Vassar in the 1950s, she studied Classics with the goal of studying archaeology, but was asked to leave the college in a traumatic episode that she still remembers as being “expelled from paradise.”
In New York, she landed on her feet with a job at a fabric salon, and took private lessons with a portrait sculptor. Out of this experience, she acquired facility with the difficult art of creating portrait busts in bronze. The difference between a good sculpture and an inspired portrait, in Cristina’s view, lies in the special visual communication with the subject via the eyes and soul, paying special attention to the most minute details that articulate a person’s face. One of her finest pieces in this medium is the portrait of Jamal Watley, the late son of our Palisades postmistress, completed in 2007.
After completing her college education at the University of Utah, she married Clark Anderson, moved to Rome, and started an art gallery in 1960 on the Via Margutta called the Spectrum Gallery. Her husband worked with Dino De Laurentis at the famous Cinecitta studios, where Federico Fellini had just completed filming of La Dolce Vita.
Through that connection, many cinema stars visited the gallery, including Jayne Mansfield, who posed with Cristina’s Afghan hound Alcibiades. The dog attracted nearly as much attention as the starlet, and he was set to appear in Anthony and Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton until budget cuts nipped his film career in the bud.
After leaving Rome in 1964, Cristina’s career took a different direction. Her marriage ended and she studied acting with Lee Strasberg, appearing in several off-off-Broadway shows. In 1965, Cristina settled in Palisades and as she got involved with the women’s movement as an activist, she also got serious again about art. She started teaching Art and Art History at Rockland Community College.
Her current work is a direct outgrowth of this time in her life. Working with cutouts of hundreds of printed images and photographs of human faces, she glues them onto the surface of spheres, wooden circles, and classic triptychs to create an homage to connections among women from all over the globe. A blue globe commemorates Cristina’s visit in 1985 to the 3rd UN world conference on women in Nairobi and a larger red one commemorates her visit to the 4th conference in Beijing in 1995. During this conference, Hilary Clinton was a major speaker, and during the applause afterwards, Cristina was the first to shout, “Hilary for President,” a shout taken up by the entire crowd.
Cristina has a show opening this month in New York City at the Ceres Gallery. The opening reception will be Saturday, May 23, from 4 – 6 pm. The show runs from May 19 (Tuesday) to June 13, (Saturday). Next fall, two more shows are planned.
Ceres Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 201 New York, NY 10001 212-947-6100 www.ceresgallery.org Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12-6
Cristina's Shows Next Fall:
October 8 (Thursday) – October 25, (Sunday) 2009
Piermont Flywheel Gallery
223 Ash Street, Piermont, NY 10968
845.365.6411
www.piermontflywheel.com http://www.piermontflywheel.
com
Hours: Thursday & Sunday 1-6; Friday & Saturday
1-9 or by appointment
Reception: Saturday, October 10, 4-6 pm
October 26 (Monday) – December 6, (Sunday) 2009
The Outside IN Piermont, 249 Ferdon Avenue Piermont, NY 10968 845.398.0706 www.theoutsideinpiermont.com http://www.theoutsideinpiermont.com Hours: 11am-6pm, Thursday – Sunday and by appointment. Reception: TBD