Lucia Spadano, art critic and journalist, founder of the magazine «Segno»

Abstract

This essay recounts the life of journalist and art critic Lucia Spadano, who, together with Umberto Sala, founded the Pescara magazine «Segno», in 1976, one of Italy's longest-running journals. The essay aims to immediately establish, in a scholarly context, shortly after her passing in February 2024, Spadano’s contribution to contemporary art criticism. It highlights her distinctive approach to writing and interpreting artworks, halfway between reporting and art criticism, developed in the 1970s, a challenging professional environment for women. This practice developed in a decentralized context, between the pages of local newspapers and then those of «Segno», which was immediately oriented towards a national and international perspective. Access to direct sources, unpublished materials preserved in the home and headquarters of the magazine, and the opportunity to gather firsthand family testimony form the basis of the qualitative empirical research method used to support this insight, informed by real-life experiences. The result is a portrait of Lucia Spadano, a central figure in the innovation of critical language, thanks to her ability to combine journalistic reporting with aesthetic analysis.