![A YOUNG ARTIST](https://cdn.magzter.com/1422886351/1721636748/articles/AoXz2YmO-1721803685099/A-YOUNG-ARTIST.jpg)
For more than two decades, Isabella Ducrot, an artist who was born in Naples in 1931, has lived in an apartment on the top floor of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, in the center of Rome.
When I knocked on her door for the first time, this past spring, she greeted me with an emphatic pronouncement in English: "I must tell you immediately that I have never been so happy in my life!" It was a Tuesday evening in April, and I'd landed in Rome just a few hours earlier. Originally, Ducrot and I had arranged to meet for lunch the next day, but when she learned of my schedule she invited me to come over sooner, for a drink and a light dinner, noting in an e-mail that she "would be enchanted" to see me immediately. She opened the door to the apartment-where she lived with Vittorio (Vicky) Ducrot, her husband of fifty-eight years, until his death, in 2022 and I entered a spacious hallway densely hung with dark, dramatic Baroque paintings. Light shone on them from French doors that led to an expansive terrace. A side table held a vase of roses that were hovering on the edge between bloom and decay. Ducrot, who is tall and upright, grasped my hand more firmly than I would have expected, saying, "Please believe what I tell you.
I adored my husband, and I am half a person now that he is not with me. But I am happy-happy." Only in the past five years has Ducrot, who turned ninety-three in June, become internationally recognized for her art, which she didn't even begin making until she was in her fifties. When creating her works, she stands and uses a brush sometimes attached to a stick, sweeping loose arcs of ink or paint onto paper or fabric. She often later incorporates scraps of other papers or textiles.
Her painted collages usually depict ecstatic figures and stylized landscapes; arrays of ovals or checkered patterns are a recurring feature. Typically made in series, her works are light, energetic, and uninhibitedly beautiful.
Denne historien er fra July 29, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra July 29, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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![AFFINITY COMEDY](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1818953/rhePbzrBE1725346676714/AFFINITY-COMEDY.jpg)
AFFINITY COMEDY
The state of the Netflix standup special.
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DUTY DANCING
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DESPERATELY SEEKING
The supreme contradictions of Simone Weil.
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WILD THING
MJ Lenderman resists the smoothing, neutering effects of technology.
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LUCK OF THE DRAW
Nate Silver argues that poker can help us game our uncertain world.
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GREEN SLEEVES
“What I want to know,” the woman said to the therapist, “is why the voices always say mean, terrible things.
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DRUG OF CHOICE
AI. is transforming the way medicines are made.
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EVERY OBITUARY'S FIRST PARAGRAPH
Alfred T. Alfred, whose invention of the plastic fastener that affixes tags to clothing upended the tag industry and made him one of America’s youngest multimillionaires—until he lost his plastic fastener fortune in a 1993 game of badminton, as depicted in the Lifetime original movie “Bad Minton”— died on Saturday. He was eighty-one.
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BE HER GUEST
The plush ambience of Ina Garten's good fortune.
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SPREADING THE WEALTH
Why a young heiress asked fifty strangers to redistribute her fortune.