Valdrada Painting

Born in 1971, Colleen Corradi Brannigan completed her artistic studies in London, Tokyo and New York, where she has received enormous acclaim for her work on expressionism. Her art shows began in 1999 with a collection at the Covent Garden Flower festival in London, followed by numerous collections and solo works both in Italy and abroad. Noteworthy espressionist styles can be seen above all in her series of musical instruments and labyrinths done in oils, watercolours, or etchings. However, it was with architectural studies in a prominently surrealistic style that Colleen caught the attention of the Italian literary comunity as well as the international scientific comunity. The encyclopaedia of Italian Literature, Ed. Luigi Einaudi chose her ‘Invisible Cities’ to illustrate the work of Italo Calvino (Vol.17) The Spanish periodical of mathematical composition Suma+ (n. 61 June 2009) judged Corradi’s interpretation of the Invisible Cities of Calvino extraordinary in the way she incorporated matematical aspects into some of them: the primordial urban characteristic of Trude; the reproduction of what is called reverse geometry in Valdrada; the fractal tridimensional configuration of Pentesilea; the helical surface of Olinda . Prominent Italian art critics such as Paolo Levi have also acclaimed the work of this artist . COLLEEN AND THE INVISIBLE CITIES My first approach to the "Invisible Cities" came as a shallow indifference. Nothing more than part of a university programme to carry out; they remained dormant in my mind for years. Then, one day, in New York, while I was working on etchings of English castles that I was familiar with, Eudossia took form. That is how the dusty cities of the past came to life and set the foundations of imaginary worlds that I wished to create from the "English" designs. Now, each time my mind recalls the streets of the cities as described by Calvino, I get new inspirations from words that I had not noticed before or meanings that are open to new interpretations in a discovery that is neverending.