Rita Passeri’s Uncommon Women
By Joseph Sciorra

"Nonna Maria" by Rita passeri

It’s the hands you notice first. Large, calloused, almost arthritic. The women Rita Passeri paints and draws have clearly led a life of labor. Passeri’s naturalistic paintings and drawings are tributes to workingwomen who toiled on Umbrian farms and in New York factories. She depicts the women individually and in a moment of quietude, looking resolutely and meeting the viewer’s gaze unabashedly. These are women Passeri has known intimately -- grandmothers, aunts, her mother a next-door neighbor. They have touched the artist directly, having demonstrated their compassion, generosity and support over the years. There is her great aunt Anna who bought her books as a little girl and her neighbor Adalgisa from her family’s apartment building in Rome who encouraged Passeri to travel abroad as a young woman. These portraits represent what Passeri calls “uncommon women,” everyday people who have exhibited personal strength, integrity and resolve in their daily lives. Depicted without husbands or children, these freestanding figures are studies of dignified and powerful personages. They are life-size holy cards of the mundane, visual hagiographies of working women who have struggled against life’s obstacles and survived.

Born and raised in Rome, Passeri was influenced at an early age by the rich legacy of Italian figurative painting and portraiture, from the elusive Etruscans to the Renaissance masters. She moved to New York City in 1983 and currently resides, among her women, in a loft apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Passeri often paints on recycled lumber and found objects like barn doors, incorporating the irregular surfaces into her overall design.
Passeri has shown her growing collection (there are fifteen images to date) in various solo and group shows, but probably the most unique exhibition of her work occurred in the Arthur Avenue Market, in the Belmont section of the Bronx. As part of Columbus Day festivities held in 2000, Passeri hung her paintings from the rafters of the LaGuardia-era indoor market. Suspended above the tripe, the soppressata, and the broccoli rabe, these elevated avatars of female fortitude and perseverance were transformed into refracted mirror images of the uncommon women shopping below
(Originally printed in Primo Magazine, March/April 2002.).
“Uncommon Women,” an exhibition of Rita Passeri’s paintings and drawings curated by Joseph Sciorra, will be on display at the Italian American Museum from March 21- April 19, 2005.
The Italian American Museum, temporarily located at 28 W 44th St. 17th fl., has received widespread support from Italian Americans. The Museum is dedicated to exploring the rich cultural heritage of Italy and Italian Americans by presenting the individual and collective struggles and achievements of Italians and their heirs to the American way of life.