Jane Truzzi-Franconi (1955-1993)
Retrospective

20 January – 03 March 1996
Wolsey Art Gallery

A natural and instinctive sculptor, Jane Truzzi-Franconi delights in bold, ample forms that "seemingly bristled and crackled" with the concentrated and contemplative activity of producing them. Her sculptures of bantams and peacocks are beautifully simple in outline, yet capture a moment of stance and expression that is both finely observed and humorous. Less familiar are the tree and spiral forms of her student days and the mysterious and highly abstracted sea and fish forms of her later work. Drawings and work still in the plaster or wax state offer a rich insight into her working methods and the development of her ideas.

Born in Brixton, she trained as a sculptor at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design and at Goldsmiths College, London. Bernard Meadows was persuaded against the odds to accept her on the foundry course at the Royal College, where in 1978 she became the first ever female student. The "charm, skill and dedication to hard work" commemorated by Tissa Ranasinge, then in charge of the foundry, won her the Angeloni Prize and paved the way for subsequent female students.

In 1983, a move to Suffolk accompanied the establishment of her own foundry at Clock House, Bruisyard, where time was proportioned between bronze casting and sculpture, resulting in an intimate relationship between her sculptural methods and the processes of lost wax casting.
In Suffolk too, she found a happy balance between quiet solitude for work and the companionship of other artists. Though she returned part-time to London in 1987, with promising developments in her career, she nevertheless found she needed Suffolk in order to work. From 1989 she would return to her studio at Yoxford whenever possible with her new family and her work evolved in fascinating and original directions until her tragic death in 1993, aged 38.

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