Artist’s book

Fernanda Fedi has been working on artists books since 1974, the year where she realized her first artist book ‘Silence’.

She appeared on countless exhibitions on artists’ books in Italy and abroad. 

Since 2002 she has been invited to all the Biennials of the Artist’s Book at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria Egypt and in 2010 she was (with Gino Gini) international co-curator.

 She is present in international museums and libraries including the Tate Library London, MART in Rovereto (Bentivoglio collection), Central Library in Florence,… In 1983 she founded with Gino Gini ‘l’Archivio Libri d’artista’ in Milan (Artists’ Books Archive Milan) with the aim to disseminate knowledge of this ‘media.

This is what she thinks about this form of art:

 ‘It’s the quality of the artist that makes the artist’s book. It’s the artist who avails herself of every kind of material at her disposal in order to shape it according to her idea, her interpretation, her thoughts. It’s the artist who hammers and creates the book without having to get help from others for its accomplishment: however, the artist’s book is essentially a book in one single copy or in a few copies which has been conceived, imagined, hammered by the artist’

‘Words, signs, and calligraphy are expression of an interior world often associated with music, poetry, and archaic languages of the imagination. I have been working with the idea of signs and writing since 1980. A repeated sign can be an obsession – a symptom of a neurosis changed into a poetic vibration.

In the artist’s book, I justaxpose signs with music, poetry, and language. The work holds my own subconscious vibrations, which are a mixture of thoughts, sensitivity, awareness of the void, and an inexplicable something else. When I study it, I see things of which I was not aware when I was painting. But when I look again I see things there, in my endless book. 

 Fernanda Fedi ‘The Book as Art – Artists’ Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts’, Washington USA, 2007

A small number of pieces from this period is still available to purchase directly from the artist. Please enquire within to discuss your preferences and needs.