Valle di Lazzaro, on the island of Elba, is today a residential area just off the city of Portoferraio, but in 1988, when Master Luciano Regoli decided to adopt it as a haven and atelier, it was still (in the upper side) an agricultural valley surrounded by wooded hills.
The painter, from Rome, where he spent his youth together with his brother photographer, studying at the shadow of the great Capitoline Renaissance and Baroque works, decided to reopen a tiny ruin just on the top of the valley, where the few cultivated fields were going to progressively and quickly get covered by the woods again.
One single modest room, surrounded by the beauty and the silence of the land of Elba: this became soon the very informal location of a real school of painting.
Luciano Regoli’s word of mouth and his skill did the rest, so that in a few years many talents went through this singular artistic experience.
The testimony given in the video tells a cross section of Elba as a place of inspiration, a shared love for the beauty of the place and the pictorial study.
Nowadays the school experience continues in the painting studio of Luciano Regoli, who moved to the historic centre of Portoferraio. The old, small ruin is still there, at the beginning of the Valle di Lazzaro, overtopped by bushes and frequented by the forest inhabitants, who are now the only landlords of this place.
Graziano Rinaldi
