“The work entitled Fabbrisol is made of a nebuliser which has been modified and painted by hand. The decoration stems from a reinterpretation of the different versions of Amarena jars on sale. The Amarena syrup will be nebulised into the air, and we can almost smell its delicious scent […]. The diffusion can be adjusted to minimum or maximum power. The work needs electricity to function and of course, the tank needs to be refilled with diluted Amarena syrup. It should be displayed on a pedestal.” This is Gaia Scaramella’s description of her work which rouses the senses, not restricting itself to the eyes, although they too are immediately captivated by the beauty of its shape.

A little boy in the foreground holds a colourful marble in his hand as he tries to look at it from a good perspective. The work is painted using mainly blue tones (Amandine Samyn is a great admirer of Fra Angelico, his skies, his faces and the blue clothes of his Madonnas). There is a single dot of red, and if you look closely you will see that it is not painted, but that there is a hole there. And on closer inspection, that’s not a marble, but an Amarena. Edouard Manet’s Boy with Cherries looked out at the viewer with his pile of fruit on the parapet, while this boy is portrayed as he plays a game by himself. He is not posing but competing.

Resin is Barbara Salvucci’s favourite material to work with. In many of her works it is transparent and contains traces of fabric, flowers and natural elements, as if they were fossils. In this work, which is constructed like a large holy-water stoup, the resin is white. Similar works, including those displayed at the Temple Gallery in Rome in 2013, have shapes which look like a shroud, containing honey. In this work, the source of joy is the Fabbri fruit. The decoration is a fragment of the famous jar given by Gennaro Fabbri to his wife Rachele.

Starting with the colour of the Amarenas, Marina Sagona has chosen pink and red to create her little squares which each depict some abstract decorations with attractive bright colours, containing lines, arabesques and circles. Together, they form a single puzzle, in a complex construction which meanders along the wall to create the name of the Fabbri company.

"The photograph contains various elements which can often be found in my work. The presence of the sofa is a continuous thread which has appeared for the past fifteen years. In this new image, the beetle brings together, in 1915 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and the creation of the Amarena recipe by Rachele Fabbri. The goldfish symbolises richness and the success of
a family business. The entire work was created without using Photoshop.”
S.R.

This work by Francesca Rao has been created using shadows that are projected and multiplied. There is the double outline of a jar which we know is the Fabbri jar, in black and white, a style which the artist has used frequently in the past. There are two profiles in the background, one male and one female, which are coming closer together because love generates love. These figures, in addition to the monochrome palette, seem to take the work back in time, giving it a 1950s feel, as if the image had reemerged from memory, or a frame from an old film.

“I couldn’t create a work that describes the outside world, because description is not one of my objectives. What I want to do is not talk about the world but be a part of it,” Nazzarena Poli Maramotti said in a recent interview. This is why her painting moves between reality and abstraction, seizing the moment, and the fleeting nature of things, as well as their continuous changes, as if everything changes just as the artist looks at it. This can also be seen in this Carosello (Carousel), with its circular, lively movement, which is certainly not talking about the world. Nevertheless it is a part of it.

A sweet explosion can be seen in Luana Perilli’s work. These sculptural objects seem to be trying to invade the wall with their red contents. Perilli creates works using intelligent irony. She is fascinated by the social structure of ants’ nests, and by the perfect organisation that the tiny animals are able to create and also teach those who observe them. She has produced many works on this theme. Our work too, seemingly distant in terms of theme and creation, is actually constructed in a similar way. Each little sculpture seems to have a beating heart, and the whole installation is not static, but rather everything is moving and changing. We just have to watch and learn.

This time the Fabbri jar is turned upside down on a child’s head, probably after the child has just finished devouring its contents. The game, however, in Alice Pavesi Fiori’s work, becomes something mysterious. The object hides a face, so that viewers cannot completely see the child in front of them. What does this child look like? What are her eyes like, and her hair, and her features? Who can recognise her? There is a surreal element which changes a seemingly realistic context. The contrast is made even more apparent by the sharpness of the image, which is rare in the artist’s work. Her photographs, including the series Attese (Waiting), are usually faded, as if they were taken a long time ago, with pictorial connotations that here are completely absent.

This light, enchanting video by Giulia Palombino is in black and white, with a touch of Amarena. The fruit is recalled in the stove, where we can imagine it cooking, in the colour and shape of the main figure’s hair, as she measures ingredients for the preparation of her favourite dessert. Then it appears, fluttering about, to reach a cake with legs and three little pastries to decorate. The journey ends with a tasting: Amarena in the mouth. Could there be a more suitable place?

“When I think of Fabbri and its Amarenas, my memory immediately tumbles into a fairy-tale dimension. These juicy memories are part of my mother’s past, as well as part of my childhood, and they will live on in the memory of some of today’s children. The white and blue jar that Gennaro Fabbri gave to his wife Rachele represents the concept of a gift. This idea of handing something from one person to another, reminded me of the idea of fruit as a source of nutrition, containing a seed which is a symbol of propagation. It is this cyclic nature, of time, which interests me. And so I decided to create a little story to be seen through a View-Master, the first 3-D vision system, a cult object from the 1950s, which is tied to my childhood as well, and which was rediscovered and adapted in order to tell a personal story. Inside the little disc, which is round, indicating the cyclic nature and continuous rotation of things, the images go by, like a process of growth and evolution which repeats itself over time.” M.E.N.

The subjects that Isabella Molard usually chooses for her paintings are gardens, patios and comforting places, often protected by rich vegetation. In this work, she has also chosen to portray a place in which everybody would love to stay, superimposing the images of Amarena jars an abundant fruits with those of an old building surrounded by greenery. The place is deserted but the viewer can imagine a human presence – perhaps children are on their way to taste the delicious treats in the foreground, or working men and women are following the recipe written in the book which is open on the right of the circle which frames part of the composition.

In a landscape of shadows and fog, which is rainy and grey, the outline of a Fabbri Amarena jar stands out like a well-proportioned white building. Kaori Miyayama has chosen an almost entirely monochrome world for this work, which transforms right in front of us into something bright. In contrast to what usually happens, she has not been seduced by the decoration and colours of the Amarena jar, but rather has focused exclusively on the particular nature of its shape. The scene is lit up by golden embroidery and, as always in her work, everything is dominated by transparency, lightness and the superimposing of weightless elements. The back of the painting is also covered with the same patterns, as if, once she started, she wasn’t able to stop the flow of images which enchant and captivate our eyes.

What is inside the Fabbri jar in Kobayashi’s work? Lightness. The Japanese artist studied in her home country but now lives in Italy, where she works by drawing the world, in her own particular way. She uses a black iron wire as if it were a pencil. Here enchanted drawings hold back emptiness, a fundamental element in the visual culture of her country, which is good for the eyes. The black and white of this work are only interrupted by the red of the Amarena which can be seen in the mouth of the little bird.

Balustrades, arches and windows separate space in Ana Kapor’s paintings from reality. Kapor was born in Serbia but has lived in Italy since 1983 because she loves Italian paintings. In this work, in the background, there is also a typical Italian landscape, surrounded by an opening which makes it seem more distant, but also frames it and identifies it as a familiar element. In the foreground is a Fabbri jar containing a few marbles, and three Amarenas are perched on the windowsill as symbols. There are no people in the work, which is common in her paintings. Time is suspended but the viewer can imagine that somebody is due to come back, perhaps a child who loves making up games to play on his own.

With a fascination for landscapes, Alessandra Giovannoni has chosen to depict a road in this work, or more specifically the road where Fabbri’s offices are situated. The work contains the artist’s typical colour palette, such as the ochre that she often uses to portray her city, Rome, and the typical blue of her seascapes. The large jar of Amarenas sets the tone of the composition. Giovannoni’s paintings never contain specific details, and here too she has constructed the image, especially in the background, using patches of colour dominated by light.

Since the Fabbri Art Prize began, artists have used the famous jar in many different ways. Tamara Ferioli has transformed it into the world. She has drawn a map onto its form, using white and blue, the colours of the jar’s decoration, but also of the sea. This globe full of Amarenas could be a solution for the many troubles of our planet. What a great geography lesson!

This precious little still life was created by Francesca Ceccarelli for the Fabbri Art Prize.

It is the Amarena jar that sets the tone for the stamps. The row of porcelain cups piled up on the left, and the little bowl, are also blue and white. The teaspoon in the foreground forms a link between the space in the painting and the viewer. Its “twin” is leaning, a little bit further back, inside the container, where we can see the only element that interrupts the emphasis on colour in the composition – a warm tone and a thin red line which recalls the colour of the Amarena fruit.

The centre of Gea Casolaro’s shows the flowers of the Amarenas which started the adventure that is now celebrating its centenary. On the sides, in a repeated image, as if reflected in a mirror, are the two main characters who have made this possible behind the scenes, namely the Fabbri workers in a period photo. This use of images from different contexts is typical of all her work. One of her most intriguing series, entitled Visioni dell’Eur (Visions of the Eur), combines the architecture of the Roman neighbourhood, everyday life and images from films. She also created a dramatic, poetic video installation entitled Ai caduti d’oggi (To the Fallen of Today), dedicated to people killed in accidents at work, which was displayed in Rome at the reopening of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, where a worker had actually been killed. This work is cheerful, but Casolaro has created a lyrical, rhetoricfree celebration of all the women who made Rachele’s idea great, which she would undoubtedly have appreciated.

Fabbri’s Amarena is 100 years old, but for many of the artists who have been invited to celebrate this occasion, it dates back to their childhood. For Anna Caruso, creating a work for this exhibition has also meant taking a trip down memory lane. This has resulted in the black and white images that appear in her painting, mainly created using cool blue and green tones. These colours define the core element of the picture, namely the blue and white jar, which we can see here upside down. The artist works by layering images, and she has used this technique here as well, creating a space that hovers between dreams and memory. “The greatest dream was the dream never dreamed” is a line from a song by Francesco De Gregori.

The Pomeriggio (Afternoon) by Neapolitan artist Iole Capasso is in the style of Caravaggio. The female figure by the mirror, although we can see only a part of her face, is portrayed in front of an open window, with a blank wall. This kind of neutral background was typically used by Caravaggio behind the figures in his works, such as Mary Magdalene or Narcissus, both of which are recalled in this image. The use of light is also inspired by the same source. There is only one object which accompanies the mirror: a jar of Fabbri Amarenas, in blue and white like the long belt fastening the girl’s dress, in the same colour as the fruit.

The photograph which captures the famous decoration of the Fabbri Amarena jar, framed at an angle, becomes threedimensional thanks to the red heart, which recalls the colour of the Amarenas, created using kirigami, an oriental technique involving cutting and folding paper which the artist has used in the past. In this way, the work seems to transform into a composition of antique majolica tiles, known as “riggiole” in Neapolitan dialect, which can bring together two distant cultures and their powerful beauty, without clashing. A new poetic harmony forms the basis of Camporesi’s work, even when it captures landscapes, abandoned former prisons, other buildings, and her particular interpretation of Ophelia or Michelangelo Antonioni.

The main character of this storyboard by Silvia Argiolas is a truly particular girl: her breasts are Amarenas and her head is the jar created by Fabbri to keep them in. She, and those around her, look like idols who are performing a series of rituals, in which she is the only touch of colour in the darkness. The use of installation elements is not unusual in her paintings and her love of cinema makes her want to set a real story in motion, using a series of images.

She is famous above all for her works using recycled plastic, but Enrica Borghi also creates photographs known as Fetish Food, featuring lace, earrings, knickers, fishnet stockings, cooked pears, chicken thighs and little pastries. The dress which she has created on this occasion for her Amarena desserts is made of black lace. In the background we can see the inevitable blue and white jar. The title plays on the contradiction, in Italian, between the verb and the plural adjective: amare [“to love” or “bitter”]. However, thanks to the suspension dots, we know that all we need is a few more letters to turn that word into a commo name, ours: Amarena.

In the “Quattro Giornate” station of the Naples underground, Marisa Albanese’s Combattenti (Fighters) can be seen hanging. We have seen them before in various places,ì such as at the “Fori Imperiali” during the Post-classici exhibition. Ours seems to be holding something invisible in her hands, and has traces of the blue and white Fabbri Amarena jar decoration “tattooed” on her arms and legs. These white women created by the artist, with their helmets protecting them at the same time as sending them away into some kind of future, are distant, solemn, wistful figures. We can imagine them being victorious because of their power and energy, but Albanese depicts them when the battle is finished. Just like Donatello’s David, who was not portrayed while he was fighting but rather straight afterwards. And we can see a bit of sadness here, because there are many different ways to react to a triumph.