Nuorese Cultural DistrictFrancesca Devoto (b. Nuoro, 16 March 1912–d. Nuoro, 11 November 1989) was an Italian painter.
Francesca Devoto
Description
She studied in Florence at a Catholic school where she received an education based on Catholic culture and the humanistic and scientific disciplines. She took painting lessons with the painter Nera Simi after school.
She continued her art training at the school in Via Tripoli, Florence, headed by the same Nera Simi. The drawing and life-drawing lessons she took were fundamental for her growth as an artist, and she produced various landscapes, interiors, still lifes and portraits in Florence.
In 1931, she returned to Nuoro, where she had a studio in Via Cavour. She stayed in contact with her teacher, who she visited often until the end of the 1950s.
She participated in the 6th Exhibition of the Fascist Fine Arts Union of Sardinia in 1935, capturing the attention and admiration of the island’s artists. In 1936, she held her first solo show in Cagliari, presenting fifty-seven works.
Her exhibition at the Galleria Palladino in Cagliari was met with curiosity and enthusiasm, since it was the first time a female painter had shown her work in that gallery.
In 1937, Devoto presented many of her works in the series of solo shows of Nuoro artists held at the Casa Guiso Gallisay. The other artists included Giovanni Ciusa Romagna, Francesco Congiu Pes, Remo Branca, Pietro Mele and Pietro Collu.
That same year, she participated in the 8th Fascist Inter-Province Fine Arts Exhibition in Sassari with a single work on canvas, along with other Sardinian artists like Stanis Dessy, Eugenio Tavolara, Mario Delitala, Carmelo Floris, Felice Melis Marini and Giovanni Ciusa Romagna.
In the years that followed, she showed her work in exhibitions in Cagliari, Sassari, Iglesias, Rome, Venice and other cities.