MILLY CANAVERO

b. 1920 Genova, Italy
d. 2010 Genova, Italy 

WORKS    |    BIOGRAPHY    |     PUBLICATIONS    |    EXHIBITIONS

SELECTED WORKS

BIOGRAPHY

In 1973, Milly Canavero from Genoa, Italy, knew nothing about mediumship and parapsychology. A spirit medium revealed to her during an accidental encounter that she herself had psychic abilities. Milly began tentatively to experiment with automatic spelling and writing with a planchette and received at first simple texts, which subsequently became increasingly complex and of a philosophical content.

Suddenly and without notice, at the end of 1976 her automatic productions underwent a striking change. She began to produce automatic drawings. Milly rapidly developed a peculiar style without her intellectual involvement. Her mediumistic drawings have only one subject, and yet they all differ from one another: they are geometrical forms of straight lines and spirals, mostly drawn in one uninterrupted move, which often are supplemented by ciphers. Milly Canavero considered the pictures, signed with a flower, to be messages of an extraterrestrial intelligence.

Technically interesting is the fact that Milly Canavero produces all her geometrically precise works freehand, without ruler, compass, stencil or other aids. She believes her drawings to reveal a fundamental law of human consciousness: the evolution towards higher spiritual levels. She interprets the strange cyphers that are mostly written in boxes resulting from the linear patterns as hieroglyphics of extinct languages. Often the images are accompanied by likewise automatically received poetic messages, which she writes down on the back of the sheets.

PUBLICATIONS

Bellisai, Maria Vittoria, I messaggi del fiore: Messaggi e disegni medianici ricevuti da Milly Canavero. Rome: Ed. Mediterranee, 1981.
Canavero, Milly, Messagi da una intelligenza “intergalattica”. In: Riccardo Bargellini, Marzia Capannolo, Tea Taramino, Sono altro. Sono altrove. Sacro e profano nell’arte irregolare. Valigie Rosse, 2021, pp. 54-59.
Canavero, Milly, L'aldilà nelle tradizioni e nella messagistica. Bologna: Centro Studi Italiano di Parapsicologia, 2004.
Giovetti, Paola, "Automatisches (mediales) Malen in Italien." Grenzgebiete der Wissenschaft, 30, 1981, pp. 172–86.
Giovetti, Paola, Arte medianica. Pitture e disegni die sensitivi. Roma: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1982, pp. 148-152.
Giovetti, Paola, Messaggi e disegni medianici di Milly Canavero Serra. Luce e Ombra, 121, 2021, pp. 332-338.
Gruber, Elmar R., "Sondare l'immenso. I disegni medianici di Milly Canavero alla Biennale di Venezia", Luce e Ombra, 122, 2022, 214-223.

EXHIBITIONS

 2022 The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Art Biennale, April 23 - November 27, 2022