In a world largely monopolised by men, exemplified by their artistic-cultural predominance in the early 20th century, Adriana Bisi Fabbri sought by every means to make her way, as a self-taught artist, to freely find scope for her talent.

Painter, illustrator, satirical designer and caricaturist, Adriana Bisi Fabbri (Ferrara 1881 – Travedona 1918) traversed the first twenty years of the 20th century with her prolific artistic activity. Adrì, as she signed herself in her mature graphic output, was self-taught and impelled by a lively curiosity for every form of artistic expression, driven by the unswerving determination to make her name as an all-round artist in an age and a field in which many training courses and professional appointments were still closed to women.
The exhibition, running from 3 December 2019 to 8 March 2020 at the Museo del Novecento in Milan, and this volume that accompanies it, published by Electa, anticipates the program The Talents of Women that the City of Milan will devote in 2020 to women as the protagonists of creative thought. Both the exhibition and the catalogue are the result of study of the Bisi Crotti archive, held by the Museo del Novecento. Its reorganisation has also made it possible to reinterpret the biography of Adrì’s husband, Gianetto Bisi (Ferrara 1881 – Verona 1919), journalist and writer. The couple’s dense network of contacts with the most lively cultural environments of the time also emerges, immersed in the dynamic artistic-literary climate of the first twenty years of the 20th century, from the avant-gardes to Nuove Tendenze, with a view to a full and thorough rediscovery of those crucial decades.