Isabella Ducrot began painting at age 55, but it wasn't until 2019 that the now 94-year-old Italian artist was discovered by Cologne gallerist Gisela Capitain, who catapulted her to international fame. Today, Ducrot is represented by prestigious galleries including Petzel in New York and Sadie Coles in London, proving that artistic recognition can come at any stage of life.
Meeting at her Rome studio on the last day of July, Ducrot's sharp blue eyes scan visitors as if determining whether the coming hours will bring interesting conversation or wasted time. When asked about her zodiac sign, she lights up upon learning her interviewer is also a Gemini. "No one likes you, but you like each other," comes the response, making Ducrot laugh as she moves closer on her red-and-white striped loveseat – partly out of affection, but mostly because her hearing isn't what it used to be.
Ducrot prefers discussing her mother rather than upcoming exhibitions, including an installation in a Kyoto temple and a major retrospective at Naples' Museo Madre. "I don't want to deal with anything further away than the day after tomorrow. I want to live in the present," says the artist, who describes her current phase as "bonus life" – the years beyond 90 when rules no longer apply.
Recently, Ducrot discovered a Nietzsche edition belonging to her mother in her library, complete with markings and notes that have shaken her understanding of the woman who raised her. The same mother who provided a conservative, Catholic upbringing had secretly engaged with philosophical questions about religion's madness. Through her mother's annotations in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," Ducrot learned intimate family secrets, including that her mother was pregnant before marriage and that Isabella herself was originally named Antonia after Saint Anthony, only to have her name changed to Isabella the very next day.
Ducrot's studio sits within the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, which occupies nearly an entire block in Rome's historic center. Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj offered Isabella and her late husband Vittorio (called Vicky) rooms on the top floor 23 years ago, while Isabella rented the studio separately. Her daily routine follows a strict pattern: intelligent mornings for writing, followed by painting sessions and afternoon visitors in her studio, accessible through the palazzo's tourist gallery featuring works by Velázquez, Titian, and Caravaggio.
The well-worn loveseat in her studio testifies to countless visitors – curators, gallerists, collectors, journalists, friends, and family. "Today it's maximum three guests per day," Ducrot notes. "Before, it was thirty minimum," adds Monica Stambrini, a filmmaker friend sitting opposite them. "Isabella is a party girl." The two women met a decade ago when Stambrini was raising funds for a feminist pornographic film and Ducrot donated some of her erotic drawings for auction.
Three paintings from Ducrot's "Bella Terra" series hang on the studio wall, each featuring a gnarled tree, a river flowing up the corner in parallel waves, and a crescent moon positioned as if watching the scene unfold. When asked about meaning, she dismisses interpretation. Having read Roland Barthes' texts on Cy Twombly that morning, she explains that while Twombly's works represented nothingness and couldn't be interpreted, she does the opposite: "I paint simple objects that are exactly what they seem to be. A tree or a vase. I never learned how to paint, so I do it the most direct way."
The friendship between Ducrot and Stambrini began when the older woman insisted on attending the premiere of "Queen Kong" and showed genuine interest in the director's pornographic work. When Isabella became an international star in her early 90s, Stambrini proposed documenting this remarkable period on film. "She didn't think twice, said yes and just let me do it," Stambrini recalls.
Stambrini sees Ducrot's intense productivity as resistance against assumptions that elderly women should rest, retreat, and conclude their affairs. Instead, Ducrot does the opposite. When her brother once told her to relax, she responded, "Are you crazy? I don't want to relax, I want to do more!" The resulting documentary, "Tenga duro signorina!" (Hold on, Miss!), premiered at the Venice Film Festival, taking its title from a Raymond Queneau quote encouraging people to pursue projects without waiting for recognition.
Ducrot's fascination with textiles stems from her mother, who sewed their clothes and even dressed Isabella when she was 30. Her mother would dance on tables wearing outfits made from curtains pinned together with needles. "We used fabrics everywhere in the house – for cleaning, caring, nose-blowing. They were washed, repaired, and reused. I lived before washing machines, after all." When traveling with her husband, who ran an exclusive travel agency, to India, China, Afghanistan, and Syria, Ducrot began collecting textiles, viewing them as meaning-bearers and symbols of daily rituals.
Born in Naples' Montedidio district in 1931, Ducrot witnessed Mussolini's rise and fall, Naples' bombing, and Mount Vesuvius' 1944 eruption. At seventeen, she contracted tuberculosis, which her mother concealed out of shame. "Not even my sister knew I had tuberculosis. Illness meant disgrace. In my mother's eyes, my beauty – my capital – was devalued." Only considered cured at thirty, she moved to Rome as a single woman to work as a telephone operator for IBM, later meeting Vicky, who worked for KLM airline and soon proposed marriage.
Years of tuberculosis-induced isolation were spent with books. "I loved books, but books didn't love me," she writes in her 2025 text collection "Recent Animals." Though she quotes Kant and Nietzsche effortlessly, she made approaching subjects in ignorance her philosophy, believing it freed bolder thoughts and connections between everyday observations and intellectual ideas. After age 60, she deepened her studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Ducrot reads textiles the way she reads books, finding rhythm and rhyme, lines and holes in both. Whether examining precious antique Indian specimens or simple fabric strips washed hundreds of times for wounds and babies, she finds the simpler and more lived-in pieces most interesting. Writing down her thoughts proves as important as creating art itself.
As the afternoon progresses, nine women gather around the small tiled table in her studio while only male waiters serve Franciacorta and sandwiches. Women gravitate toward Ducrot, and women have provided crucial career impulses: Cy Twombly's wife Tatiana Franchetti inspired her textile collecting, Gisela Capitain discovered her for the art world, and various assistants, filmmakers, and curators form her support network.
In her 2008 writing collection "Text on Textile," Ducrot compares weaving to the creative union of masculine and feminine elements, identifying the static warp thread as masculine and the weft thread as feminine. She writes about sequences of female bodies guaranteeing continuity, though she notes that women who only bear sons represent interruptions in this chain. Despite having no daughters herself, Ducrot creates a network of women around her, embodying that female aging doesn't equal stagnation but persistence and creative continuity.
A partially hidden drawing in her studio depicts Demeter and Baubo from Greek mythology. After Persephone's abduction to the underworld, her mother Demeter's grief made the earth barren until the old woman Baubo shocked her into laughter by suddenly lifting her skirt and making a crude joke. Ducrot captures this pivotal moment when Baubo's absurd gesture breaks Demeter's paralysis and returns light to the world through the goddess's smile.
After her husband's 2022 death, Ducrot noticed how his absence opened doors to her past that had remained closed during his lifetime. His cosmopolitan background had made her Neapolitan origins seem provincial, but his death allowed her thoughts to wander back to Naples and her childhood. Perhaps this dual nature – simultaneously mourning and liberated, mother and trickster – explains Ducrot's appeal, along with her continued spinning of new threads at age 94.
