Böcker av Francesca Valente

"My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife."-Rita Levi-Montalcini Self-assured from an early age, Rita knew that she was cut out for a number of other roles and the difference she could make in the lives of others. Prevailing over her father''s traditional values, Rita attended medical school and continued to study the development of the nervous system after graduating. But as a Jew in fascist Italy, her work came to a halt with discriminatory race laws and again later, when she was forced into hiding from the Nazis. In a makeshift lab built from black-market items, Rita continued her research in a small space she shared with her family. Rita''s courage to accept a fellowship in the United States when she didn''t speak the language was repaid when her six-month stay stretched into thirty-three years. When, at seventy-seven years old, she and Stanley Cohen won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of nerve growth factor-now used in search of cures for Alzheimer''s and Parkinson''s diseases-Rita felt like her life was just beginning. Over the next two decades, she spoke around the globe as an ambassador for science and humanitarianism and accomplished more than most do during an entire lifetime.

La storia di un sognatore…Amadeo Pietro Giannini, con la sua capacità di immaginare un'utopia socio-economica, non è stato un tipico magnate della finanza. Grazie a una coscienza illuminata, attenta alle questioni sociali, ha saputo trasformare in realtà il sogno americano non solo per se stesso, ma per l'intera società. Nonostante drammatici ostacoli di ordine personale - non ultima la morte del padre - Giannini divenne, su scala mondiale, il banchiere guida del ventesimo secolo. Cresciuto in una famiglia di contadini, grandi lavoratori, immigrati in un'area particolarmente arretrata della California, Giannini ricevette un'educazione economica tutt'altro che convenzionale, spianandosi così la strada verso il successo e la ricchezza.Con la fondazione della Bank of Italy, particolarmente attenta alle famiglie bisognose degli immigrati, Giannini intendeva superare le barriere create a quel tempo dall'élite bancaria conservatrice, per realizzare i sogni della gente comune. Ben presto, la Bank of Italy sarebbe divenuta la Bank of America e il "povero italiano" si sarebbe trovato in condizione di sostenere la realizzazione dei sogni di visionari del calibro di Walt Disney. Giannini contribuì inoltre a dar forma allo skyline di San Francisco, finanziando l'audace costruzione del Golden Gate Bridge. Questo e molti altri frutti della sua influenza e del suo duro lavoro sono ancora oggi visibili in tutti gli Stati Uniti, per il semplice fatto che egli credeva "in una distribuzione più equa del benessere e della felicità".

Nancy Genn is a multifaceted, cross-cultural California artist. She is equally gifted in drawing, painting, sculpting, paper and printmaking. Her travels have taken her to Europe as well as Asia and the Middle East. Her cultural nomadism had influenced her art with a sort of material transmutation combining both Eastern and Western cultures, reflecting somehow the city where she was born and raised, San Francisco. Throughout her life-long career, she has continued to experiment, deploying an array of media and techniques with their various traditions: gouache, casein, mono-printing, collage, tearing, and also her lost wax bronze sculptures and ceramics. Genn has been a major contributor to the history of post-war American painting. Her career has spanned several generations of abstract painters. She continues to produce vital and ever- changing new work, while being a devoted mother of three. She has held an important position in the movement of gestural abstraction and abstract expressionism. Her artwork was first introduced internationally in 1960 by art critic and philosopher Michel Tapié, who founded with Luigi Moretti e Franco Assetto the Center for Aesthetic Research in Turin and, at the same time, published Morphologie Autre in Paris, a seminal text which introduced radical concepts of artistic perception based on a new abstract morphology. He selected a number of artists from Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan and placed Nancy Genn next to Burri, Fontana, Capogrossi, Tàpies, De Kooning, Motherwell, Pollock, and Tanaka, among others.