Queer Places:
Biblioteca Comunale Niettà Aprà, Piazza Del Podio, 10090 Cinzano TO
Antonietta "Nietta" Aprà ( Milan , 1905 - Cinzano , 1990 ) was an Italian art historian , writer and essayist
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She made no secret of her passionate, 40-year relationship with the translator Linda (Flafi) Mazzuccato. The fact that the self-taught Aprà reached the heights of her profession as a woman in Italy at that time was unusual. The fact that her lifestyle was so unashamedly public was unique.
She spent most of her life between Milan where she worked for the Castello Sforzesco museum and the lower Monferrato : Sciolze and Cinzano [1] were the places of origin of her family. She was one of the first Italian art historians to deal with the history of furniture and the minor decorative arts in general. Among her works the volumes on furniture styles published by De Agostini and then translated into both French and English. Her diaries, currently unpublished, written with great sensitivity, tell the places of her life with admirable attention and poetry. From them the director Gabriella Romano based the film Pazza d'azzurro (1996), dealing also with her relationship with Linda "Flafi" Mazzuccato (died 1974). She was the founder of the municipal library of Sciolze which she dedicated to her father Angelo Aprà and of the municipal library of Cinzano which after his death, transferred to the new headquarters in Piazza del Podio, took on the name of Biblioteca Comunale Niettà Aprà . The library dedicated to her, under the guidance of her pupil Davide Alaimo, has become, compatibly with the resources of the small town, a cultural center for the study of the history of the arts and local architecture.
My published books:
