Alina Kalczyńska's Milanese Studio-Home Preserves a Legacy of Art and Poetry

Polish artist Alina Kalczyńska (born 1936 in Nowi Targ) has lived and worked in Milan since 1980, when she married publisher Vanni Scheiwiller. Her studio-home, once a hub for Italian literary and artistic circles, still houses works by Consagra, Melotti, Giulia Napoleone, and Kengiro Azuma. Since Scheiwiller's death in 1999, Kalczyńska has remained in Milan, maintaining a practice centered on watercolors, glass sculptures, and large woodcuts. Her work often accompanies poetry by Eugenio Montale, Maria Corti, and Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska. In the 1960s, she began with abstract-informal woodcuts, later evolving toward a refined balance of light and form in linoleum cuts. Watercolor became her primary medium in the 1990s. A first retrospective is planned for early 2017 in Milan. Part of her archive will go to Poland, citing Italian institutional neglect. Critic Carlo Belli once asked her: 'Alina, who gave you the power to make the most elementary signs appear as expressions of high magic?'