| The Abruzzi Mountain Workshop/drawing and painting in Italy | |||||||||||
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Perched half on a mountain, half deep in the valley below, Anversa degli Abruzzi is an Italian village that also straddles time. Visitors to this medieval town enter a simpler world, a place where grapes and fragrant saffron are grown, where stone abbeys and castles dot the mountainside and crystal lakes offer a cool afternoon swim. Only 75 miles (120km) east of Rome in the less-traveled
Abruzzi
region of central Italy, Anversa is a town of light and color and
intense Bordering Anversa is the Gole del Sagittario, a designated WWF nature preserve. And mountain trails wind 4000 feet above the valley floor, offering hikers a majestic view of the south-central Apennines, including Grand Sasso, one of Italy's tallest peaks. The mountains also contain huge reserves of clay, which once made the village a chief producer of Italian tile work. Most of the tile in Hadrian's Villa was created in Anversa. The Abruzzi Mountain Workshop
was conceived in 1992, when artist and teacher Patricia
Antonucci arrived in Anversa while seeking the town Restoring a stone farmhouse in the village, Patricia equipped and staffed the Workshop, which, since 1993, has been drawing students from around the world. 
In this town of only 300 people, the school has become tightly integrated into village life. Students eat, live and work alongside the villagers, who bring their new friends home for coffee and ciamballe—all providing a rich, human backdrop for artistic exploration. Discover more about Anversa and the Abruzzo region: Other AMW art and design links: |
"Abruzzi is the most beautiful
area, and Anversa is a storybook town. It was an inspiration."
Elaine, NYC |
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natural beauty. It has inspired artists from the Roman poet Ovid to M.C.
Escher and Edward Lear, all of whom worked in the village and surrounding
hills.
where her grandfather once lived. A native New Yorker, Patricia had long
dreamed of starting an art school in Italy. She became captivated by the
reflected light of the limestone cliffs, whose silvery glow provided a
startling clarity, intensifying colors, bringing the world to brilliant
life.