Giuditta Scalini
1912 - 1966
The sculptor Giuditta Scalini was born in Como in 1912. In 1935 she met Massimo Campigli, who described her as being ‘beautiful, athletic, timid, morose, embarrassed, embarrassing’. In 1939, the year of their marriage, they collaborated on the design of a fresco for the University of Padua. For many years she did not exhibit, but once she did so obtained great success. Although influenced by Campigli, she had a personal and distinctive style of her own, akin to Etruscan, Mayan and Nuragic art. Tragically, Scalini’s life – blighted by depression and lack of self-confidence – was to be changed for ever after the Second World War by a serious road accident in Switzerland that resulted in her losing her memory for months, and from which she never completely recovered.
Text © The Estorick Collection, 2018