Houses of Cultural Figures – International Open Days
Casa di Elena Guaccero, Venice, 18 and 19 April 2026
It was not only a great honour to be included in the “International Days of Famous People’s House Museums”, an initiative organised by the National Association of House Museums, but above all a deeply moving and joyful experience.
On Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 April 2026, we opened our mother Elena Guaccero’s home and studio to visitors for the very first time: our initial hesitation and fear of ‘violating’ a place she considered entirely private gave way to a wonderful experience of sharing who our mother was, her works and her vibrant enthusiasm, and a recognition of the care and importance of memory, which can also serve as a source of support and inspiration for those who look upon it today and are transported to a different world.
We are delighted to have welcomed, between Saturday and Sunday, 43 people across four sessions, all of whom were very enthusiastic, amazed and surprised.
Surprising Twentieth Century
Young Americans in the 1950s
Mangini, Guaccero, Chiaia & Napolitano
Bari Museum, 8 October to 9 November 2025
[…] In those years, in the architectural debate in Bari, Onofrio Mangini was not in an isolated position, but rather in good company. Alongside him were other educated young people and professionals such as Vittorio Chiaia, Massimo Napolitano, Vito Sangirardi, Alfonso Chiaia, Tonino Cirielli, Elena Guaccero and others. A generation of young “architect-builders” who, having recently graduated outside the region and returned to their homeland, were able to produce memorable examples of architecture in a geographical area that was peripheral to the national debate but, thanks to their commitment, very dynamic in the local debate. He was also a point of reference for some of his colleagues of the same age, such as Elena Guaccero, who also graduated in Rome in 1954, with whom he designed several residential projects along the new urban expansion routes south of Bari. […]
D. Danilo Stefanelli
AISU 2025
Palermo, 12 September 2025
On Friday 12 September, in the Mediterranean setting of the University of Palermo, a presentation dedicated to the architect Guaccero was given as part of the session entitled La città delle donne. Pioneers and designers on an urban and landscape scale (19th-20th centuries), coordinated by Rosa Sessa (University of Naples Federico II), Silvia Berselli (University of Parma) and Monica Prencipe (independent researcher, Ancona).
The contribution by PhD student Francesca Giudetti (Milan Polytechnic, ABC Department), entitled The city of Bari and its “taciturn builder”: Elena Guaccero’s (1924-2006) projects for the Apulian capital in the post-war period, investigated the housing models and architectural experiments proposed by the architect in the 1950s.
During the years when the new General Urban Development Plan by architects Piacentini and Calza-Bini (1952-1954) shaped the future of the Apulian capital, Elena Guaccero carried out social housing projects in various neighbourhoods that still stand out today as elements of rupture and, at the same time, of novelty in the urban fabric. An analysis of the archival materials preserved in her Venetian home has revealed the modernity of the floor plans and the interchangeability of the interior spaces, the interaction between art (in all its forms) and architecture, the dynamism of the façades adorned with local stone and ceramic cladding (albeit inspired by the International Style), the study of light and shadow, and the interpenetration of open, closed and semi-closed spaces. Among the buildings on display are the building in Piazza Roma 33, the building complexes in the Picone district designed with Onofrio Mangini, the building in Poggiofranco and the famous RAI headquarters in Via Dalmazia 104, which was (finally) listed a week ago by the Municipality of Bari among the 20th-century buildings to be protected.
events
Exhibition at the Arkè Art Gallery
Venice, 26 April – 8 June 2024
The Arkè art gallery in San Samuele, Venice, hosted an exhibition entitled ‘Elena Guaccero between fantasy and creativity’ for the second time (the first time was in the autumn of 2012). The exhibition was held to celebrate what would have been Elena’s 100th birthday.
There are some touching comments in the visitors’ book. Here is a small selection (unfortunately not all the signatures are legible).
One hundred years old but she doesn’t show it! Art is always young. If it is beautiful!
Best wishes for Elena’s 100 years, a simply fantastic artist mother!
Giustina and Filippo
An exhibition to be discovered in all its possible transformations. Beautiful!
Annalisa Sacerdoti
An enchanted world… wonder!
Merci beaucoup! C’est le miroir de l’essence vitale!
So happy to find this wonderful, joyful works of art. I read somewhere that sketching is like a song in the bath, free and playful. This is even more: thought out, mathematical, but still full of joy and colour. Thank you!
Lot
I found many memories of my childhood here. I am thrilled.
Alessandra Tedesco
Un prazer estar neste lugar tão lindo, e encontrar este trabalho tão delicado e potente. Conhecer Giovanna foi una alegria a mais.
Juliana Saude Barreto (Brasil)
Thank you, Elena, for a few minutes I became a child again… but I see with an adult’s eyes and understand the creative genius.
P. Dalmartello
An original woman! She has moved with the times, transforming even common materials into fascinating mobile toys. Thank you
Andrea Braun
Un havre de creativité et de fraicheur entouré d’une Biennale mauvaise et depressante.
Ludovic
A wonderful memory of Elena! Bravo Anna Maria for keeping her spirit alive.
Julia
Beautiful surprise to see here so good and original artist. Thank you for this Gallery!
Margareth (Hamburgh) and Elisabeth (Polen)
Creativity, harmony, playfulness, balance, beauty… Thank you!
Donation of the digital archive of architect Elena Guaccero
Bari, 13 April 2023
President Mimmo Mastronardi and Councillor Danilo Stefanelli welcomed Anna Maria Rocca to the offices of the Bari Institute of Architects for the official signing of the deed of donation of the digital archive of Architect Elena Guaccero (Bari 1924 – Venice 2006). Guaccero designed the RAI headquarters in via Dalmazia which was completed in 1959. This building, referred to at the time of its inauguration as ‘The building of 100 windows’, is still one of the clearest examples of modern architecture of the 1950s in Apulia, and is tangible evidence of the new approach to spatial organisation for the modern radio-television ‘machine’; it was rightly included in the recent MIC census of Italian Architecture from 1945 to the present day.
The event began with participants sharing their memories, allowing us to get to know the more human and private side of Elena Guaccero who chose to be an architect at a time when it was not easy to make her way in the southern Italy, a world dominated by men (as is evident in the construction site photo in which Elena is the only woman next to Engineer Alfonso Chiaia who supervised the construction of the RAI building). This is another reason why the material in Elena Guaccero’s private archive is valuable to the Bari Institute of Architects, which, as it did with Marino Lopopolo, will preserve it in order to activate institutional paths of cataloguing, study, research and dissemination to the new generations to preserve the memory of an important post-war figure together with Vittorio Chiaia, Massimo Napolitano, Onofrio Mangini, Vito Sangirardi, Tonino Cirielli and others. Guaccero knew how to cultivate her passion even when, having first moved abroad and then to Venice, she decided to devote herself to creating two-dimensional and three-dimensional artworks, evidence of a versatility and talent that was always capable of reinventing itself.
exhibitions
NUTRIRSI DI BELLEZZA
Venice, 14 October and 11 November 2022
On the occasion of the 7th edition of the Festival Dentro l’arte, on 14 October and 11 November 2022 from 5 to 6 p.m., ‘Affetti/Effetti. Architecture, Painting and Sculpture’ was held at Elena Guaccero’s house in Venice. Participants were able to discover the secrets of her home-studio, her paintings, her sound sculptures, and more thanks to her daughters Anna Maria and Alessandra Rocca who welcomed us and Silvia Pichi of BarchettaBlu’s Dentro l’Arte staff who told us the stories behind Guaccero’s works!
NUTRIRSI DI BELLEZZA
Venice, 22 October and 20 November 2021
On the occasion of the 6th edition of the Dentro l’arte Festival , on 22 October and 20 November 2021 from 5 to 6 p.m., ‘Affetti/Effects. Architecture, Painting and Sculpture’ was held at Elena Guaccero’s house in Venice. Participants were able to discover the secrets of her home-studio, her paintings, her sound sculptures, and more thanks to her daughters Anna Maria and Alessandra Rocca who welcomed us and Silvia Pichi of BarchettaBlu’s Dentro l’Arte staff who told us the stories behind Guaccero’s works!
ARTNIGHT 2019
As part of the ARTNIGHT 2019 event, the University of Warwick in Venice presented two exhibitions on different themes and using different languages, but which shared the same sensitivity that characterizes the world of women: Elena Guaccero’s Creatures and Anna Zemella’s People of the Lagoon. Both exhibitions were accompanied by the music of Cecilia Nicolè’s HerTiltedMoons.
Elena Guaccero’s Creatures was a fascinating exhibition curated by Guaccero’s daughter Anna Maria Rocca. It was based on an idea by Maurizio Buttazzo who wanted to recreate the ‘wardrobe of wonders’ that Guaccero had built in her new home in Venice to display the hundreds of brightly coloured wooden characters she made in the 1980s and 1990s. She created each one piece-by-piece, cutting them and smoothing them, and assembling them with small bolts to make them capable of movement. The result is a sort of futuristic party with a huge variety of colourful, articulated ‘Meccano’ puppets.
Gagliano del Capo, August 2013
Le creature di Elena Guaccero (Elena Guaccero’s Creatures), is the title of the exhibition curated by Ada Martelli and organized by the Association Via Vai nello storico Palazzo Comi a Gagliano del Capo (LE). Thanks to this initiative, the artist has returned to Puglia by means of her works: paintings, collages and a selection of pupazzi: her fantastic, brightly painted, 3D wooden figures. The exhibition also includes an installation featuring the video Squaring the Circle, Guaccero’s playful solution to one of the most well-known problems of Greek geometry.
Backstage
Venice, October – December 2012
The Arkè Art Gallery, in San Samuele, hosted an exhibition of works by Elena Guaccero entitled Art Is a Game and Games Have Their Own Rules. It was the first time Guaccero’s work were displayed at a public exhibition (during her lifetime, she only showed her works in a family context, as if her creative and manual work were nothing more than a game). After research into the artist’s archive carried out by her eldest daughter Anna Maria Rocca, this small public exhibition was organised. It features some of the Guaccero’s most significant pieces that summarize the painstaking work carried out during the last 30 years of her life.
All her works, from collages to wooden puppets, are entirely made by hand, with the use of the simplest tools, paper and cardboard, glue, scissors, pencil, saw, colors and brush.
“…with infinite patience and precision, Elena Guaccero designs and makes her pupazzi and other objects with the aim of stimulating our imagination. They bring us back, albeit briefly, into a dimension of play that we thought was hopelessly lost, but that perhaps was only hidden in the depths of our being.” Giovanni Bianchi
Venice, April 2011
A series of initiatives for children around the theme of chemistry entitled Giocosamente Chimica was held during the Reading Month organised by the Barchetta Blu association. One of these – an exhibition of works by Elena Guaccero that were inspired by the incredible and innumerable geometric shapes present in chemistry – was held at the Serra dei Giardini.
