Sky Arte Documentary on Giosetta Fioroni Premieres at Rome Film Fest

A documentary titled "Pop Sentimentale" on Italian artist Giosetta Fioroni was presented at the Festa del Cinema di Roma. Produced by Sky Arte, the film adopts a classic, non-authorial approach, aiming to contribute to the historicization of the living artist. Fioroni, the only woman in the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo group, frequented Caffè Rosati alongside artists like Schifano, Festa, and Angeli. In the late 1950s, before the social upheavals of 1968, she faced collectors reluctant to buy works from young female artists presumed to abandon art for family. Determined to be called a "pittore" rather than "pittrice," she infused femininity into her art without joining feminist movements, which she found too aggressive. Her work, from hearts in her informal period under Toti Scialoja to her famous industrial silver faces, aimed to construct a feminine epic celebrating beauty and charm as qualities then seen as threats to emancipation. Daughter of a sculptor and a puppeteer, her daily life was a laboratory for materials and techniques. The documentary features her own recollections, supported by archival materials, and contributions from Achille Bonito Oliva and Francesco Vezzoli. It also touches on her forays into fashion, including costume design for RAI and drawings for a polka-dot Carmen that inspired a Valentino collection; that production, directed by Arbasino and set by Vittorio Gregotti, was booed but famously enchanted Roland Barthes.