Sveva Ersilia Giovanella Maria Fabiani Caetani di Sermoneta was born in Rome, Italy, on August 6, 1917 to a middle-aged, aristocratic father and his young mistress, Ofelia Fabiani. She died in Vernon, BC on April 28, 1994. These two locations were the poles of her physical existence, but the universe – past, present and future – was the inspiration for her art. Sveva’s life is one of contradictions and of overcoming hardships – an affirmation that sometimes great pain produces great art.
Interest in Sveva Caetani’s life and art has increased as a result of the opening of the exhibit titled Sveva Caetani: Forma e Frammento at MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome. The exhibit runs from October 3, 2025 to January 4, 2026. For the first time all 47 works (some multiples) in Sveva’s Recapitulation Series are being exhibited together. And the timing is ideal, as the work of overlooked women artists around the world continues to come to the fore. British-Mexican artist Leonora Carrington and Swedish artist Hilma Af Klint come to mind.
Photo: courtesy, Adriana Davies.
In the biography and catalogue raisonné titled Sveva Caetani’s Recapitulation Series: From Medieval Mysticism to the Space Age (forthcoming in 2026 by Guernica Editions), I compare Sveva to Surrealists such as Carrington and Salvador Dali, as well as Marvel Comics cartoonists, and artwork associated with writers of fantasy and mythopoeic literature such as Mervyn Peake and J. R. R. Tolkien. Sveva’s work embraces various art movements, from Symbolism to Surrealism to Fantasy and Science Fiction. In various manuscripts held by the Vernon Archives, she discusses her sources in terms of world literature and art. The Recapitulation Series is a “mind” and “heart” journey (her description) through both mythic and contemporary worlds.
Growing up, Sveva was schooled by governesses and tutors – her only formal education was at the Crofton House School in Vancouver from 1930 to 1932. She was mostly self-taught as an artist. Her father Leone died in 1935 in Vernon, BC, leaving his 18-year-old daughter in the care of her mother Ofelia. Ofelia often spiralled into depression and obsessive-compulsive behaviours. She was terrified that Sveva would leave her, and she kept her a virtual prisoner in their home. For a time, she even forbade her from painting. Fortunately, Sveva was able to read books, which shaped her intellect and imagination. (See: “Sveva Caetani and Her Recapitulation Series” in Accenti.)
Photo: courtesy, Adriana Davies.
Sveva emerged from this twisted world upon her mother’s death in 1960 with no marketable skills. A Roman Catholic priest got her a job in a local school (Sveva spoke Italian, French, and English) and could also teach art, having studied in a Parisian art academy in 1929 and with André Petrov in Monte Carlo in 1930. She obtained high-school equivalency in Victoria in 1969 and attended two years of art teacher training at the University of Victoria (1970-1972). She taught at the high school in Lumby, a rugged lumber town near Vernon, until various illnesses forced her to retire in 1983.
Fascinated by the emerging environmental movement, the conquest of space, the rise in interest in the Oriental religions, and the injustice of war that she saw dominating world history, in the mid-1970s, she conceptualized a series of paintings that would deal with her family’s personal tragedies, but also depict the ascent of humankind from naked ape to, perhaps, spiritual beings. Based on the theories of Jung, she underwent a “dark night of the soul” ultimately arriving at a state of spiritual liberation. The Recapitulation Series, her masterwork, was begun in 1978 and completed in 1989. She used the dry-brush water colour technique and produced mostly large paintings for which she had cut the paper to size.
The “structure” of the MAXXI exhibit of her work in Rome is based on her book Recapitulation: A Journey, edited and published by Sveva’s protégée and photographer Heidi Thompson in 1995. It includes full-colour photographs of the series and explanatory text by Sveva in prose and poetry. The exhibit, curated by Chiara Ianeselli, follows the narrative presented by Sveva and includes nine sections modelled on Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
Chiara Ianeselli has created a series of rooms to house the paintings within the large gallery, based on the sections outlined by Sveva in her book. Sveva, thus, controls the exhibit narrative, and her words (text, audio and video) are accessed through multimedia stations. In addition, mid-point in the exhibit, a computer plays a loop-video interview done by Barbara Hartley at Sveva’s last exhibit at the Topham Brown Art Gallery in Vernon in 1988. This was after she began gifting the series to the Alberta Art Foundation in 1985 (the final paintings arrived in Edmonton in 1989). Since no BC institution was interested in the series, Sveva’s friend Vanessa Alexander, whose husband Keith was a member of the Alberta Legislature, arranged, with the Minister of Culture, Mary Le Messurier, to accept the paintings. The Foundation created a series of exhibits, while other works travelled to communities in Alberta, BC and, Ontario.
The entry point to the series is “Bell Tower” Section I: “Inception,” and in the exhibit it stands alone. It presents a stylized train journeying back through time into the family’s past, represented by a historic tower (such as the leaning tower of Pisa), ubiquitous in Italian landscapes. It is placed at the heart of worn-down mountains, not the Canadian Selkirks near Vernon, but in Baluchistan (a connection to her father’s Islamic study). Room 1 in the exhibit houses paintings in Section II: “The Burrows of Nightmare;” Section III: “Transition One;” and Section IV; “Le Morte Stagione.” Room 2 includes Section V: “Transition Two,” and Section VI: “Areas of Fate”; Room 3 includes Section VII: “Great Themes for a Journey”; Room 4 includes Section VIII: “A Litany”; and Section IX: “Journey’s End.” This is the terrain of nightmarish figures, some drawing on early depictions of Dante’s Inferno.
Photo: courtesy of Adriana Davies.
The first paintings in Sveva Caetani’s oeuvre explore the Dantean journey into the underworld in which Leone, her father, becomes Virgil and leads his daughter through dark episodes in the family’s past, rowed by the boatman Charon of the River Styx. These line drawings appear in all but the last paintings in which Sveva journeys alone. She not only draws imagery from spiritual quests in the Judaeo/Christian traditions, she continues with imagery from Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. A high school teacher, she was also fascinated with the world depicted in cult film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the Star Wars series. This imagery can be seen in the works as well as notions of the “sacred marriage” of the eternal male and female principles depicted in “Their World,” a kind of religious apotheosis painting, featuring her father and mother rising above desert and mountain landscapes she associated with her father and mother. Sections VII to IX depict her own spiritual quest exploring the divine in various religions, ending with the imaginative depiction of her death in a desert landscape titled “Taman Shud,” Arabic for “it is done.”
Curator Ianeselli enriches the exhibit through the presentation of materials in two tabletop displays in the two largest rooms. These are mostly drawn from the Vernon Archives and the Vernon Art Gallery collection of studies and juvenilia. There is also a space midway through the exhibit that focusses on family history, with contributions from the Camillo Caetani and Roffredo Caetani Foundations in Italy. The centrepiece is a large cast of a relief figure of Pope Bonifacio, a cast of the death mask and hands of Leone, a society portrait of Ofelia and a range of family photographs taken in Italy, France, Monte Carlo and other locations. Leone was fascinated by photography and film, and the collections are extensive. This portion of the exhibit grounds the imaginative and “other-worldly” aspects of the paintings in the “real world” of the Caetani, an aristocratic family whose history spans over one thousand years.
The MAXXI was founded in 2009 and is devoted to the presentation of international creativity. It is not just an art museum, but prides itself on being “a laboratory for cultural experimentation and innovation.” It hosts conferences, workshops and educational activities and is therefore a perfect place to host this first international exhibit of Sveva Caetani’s work. As Chiara Ianeselli noted, “This exhibition symbolically returns Sveva to her birthplace through a visionary body of work that is only now receiving the recognition it so richly deserves thanks to a unique collaboration between Canadian and Italian institutions. This long-overdue tribute brings her poetic and powerful legacy to light.” While Sveva’s physical body was trapped in her home in Vernon, the result of diabetes, arthritis and many falls, Sveva’s mind remained unfettered until the end. Her dream was for her work to travel to Rome, and her friend Anna Maria Zampieri Pan, editor of the L’Eco d’Italia newspaper in Vancouver, fed these aspirations. In a letter to Anna, Sveva noted: “What I do wish is that a record of my work should exist in Italy beside the other records pertaining to my father and our family.”
Laisha Rosnau, Executive Director of the Caetani Centre in Vernon, observed: “Italy was central to Sveva’s family history and personal identity – reflected in her memories, writing, and artwork. Hosting her first international show in the country of her birth is a remarkable tribute to her legacy.”
Greater awareness of Sveva Caetani’s work began with the publication in 2020 of Pietro Vitelli’s Sveva Caetani, Il Viaggio nell’anima dell’ultima dei Caetani di Sermoneta, and in 2023 of Sveva Caetani di Sermonetta e Dante Alighieri. Since then, two parallel initiatives emerged: first, the interest of Alessandro Giuli, who as President of MAXXI wanted to bring Sveva’s work to Italy (Giuli has since been appointed Italy’s Minister of Culture); and, second, my own research and outreach.
I had first met and interviewed Sveva in January 1987 in Edmonton when the Alberta Art Foundation did an inaugural exhibit of the Recapitulation Series. In October 2023, I visited the Caetani Centre for my own research that led to the forthcoming catalogue raisonné (see above).
Left to right: Barbara Wigle; Sherry Price, Caetani Cultural Centre former Chair; Kim Mangan, Board member; aj jaeger, immediate past Chair; Moe Mangan, volunteer; and Adriana Davies (centre); at the Maxxi in Rome (courtesy, Adriana Davies).
Under Giuli’s tenure, several exhibits were done that have links with Sveva’s work, namely Tolkien Uomo, Professore, Autore and Artificial Hell: Dante’s Inferno by Artificial Intelligence. Noting these two earlier exhibits, it seemed almost inevitable that Giuli would focus on Sveva’s work, since in its symbolism it links to esoteric traditions in various religions and cultures.
Talks are in progress on the possibility of touring the exhibit in Canada.
Adriana A. Davies has worked as a writer, editor, curator, fine and decorative arts specialist, and cultural executive director. She holds a PhD in Literature and was science editor of The Canadian Encyclopedia. She is a recipient of the Order of Canada. Her memoir, My Theatre of Memory: A Life in Words, was published by Guernica in 2023.
