Lucia Romualdi, artist of 'light scores', dies in Rome

Lucia Romualdi, the Italian conceptual artist known for her 'light scores' exploring time through space, music, and light, has died in Rome. Active since the late 1970s, she created installations and performances using optical machinery, original sound compositions, old films, and mathematical readings of 'emptiness and fullness' that rhythmically turned on and off in unusual locations. Dubbed an 'astronaut' by critic Achille Bonito Oliva, her work combined mathematical lyricism with sonic force. She collaborated with composers Franco Donatoni, Fausto Sebastiani, Ivan Fedele, and Francesco De Gregori (on the Soundings series about distance using tide tables from ports worldwide), and musicians Antonio Ballista, Bruno Canino, Stefano Cardi, and Claudio Iacomucci. Her exhibitions were held at MuHKA Antwerp, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna and Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Museo Pecci in Prato, and Castel dell'Ovo. Her last show was in May 2023 at Sala Assoli in Naples with the site-specific installation 'enigma 33, favola', a political, nomadic, musical work on distance, war memories, and themes of power, racial laws, imprisonment, Nazism, armistice, and liberation. Art critic Pietro Marino remembered her as a multimedia artist of great sensitivity who lived in Bari in the early 1970s, gaining prominence with conceptual lyrical installations and performances at Bruno Del Monaco's studio, Centrosei, and Galleria Bonomo.