ISABELLA DUCROT

Life

Isabella Ducrot was born in Naples, Italy in 1931. Her passion for textiles was ignited long before she embarked on her own artistic career—while in her fifties, during extensive travels across the Asian continent. Inspired by the traditions of Asian and Central European arts and crafts, Ducrot amassed a collection of antique textiles and miniatures from China, India, Turkey, Central Asia and Tibet. These have continued to serve as the main inspiration for her practice.

Ducrot represented Italy in the Venice Biennale in 1993 and 2011. She has exhibited her work extensively, both within Italy and globally. Alongside her artistic practice, Ducrot is a respected author of non-fiction, writing across philosophy and art history. Her books include Twenty-Two Places of the Soul (2022), Women’s Life (2021) and The Checkered Cloth (2019).

Isabella Ducrot Artworks

Ducrot works mostly with textile and paper. Her tender, intimate tapestries and tableaus draw on a broad range of material and cultural references, with philosophy, folklore and ancient craft serving as consistent influences in her practice.

The natural qualities of fabric and repetition are important facets to Ducrot’s work. She is inspired by the materiality of the textiles she works with and often seeks to highlight these qualities—the weft and weaving pattern, for example—in her artworks through minimal intervention and use of negative space. In 1989, she created a body of work that incorporated ancient Andean fabrics, going on to craft a similarly collage-like tapestry for her 1993 work at the Venice Biennale.

The repetition of motifs references her personal collection of textiles and their patterns. Circles of various scales feature regularly – in Fazzoletto (2007), a handkerchief decorated with several blue circles, for example, as well as in Veduta (2001), a site-specific installation composed of paper with a repeat pattern of blue circles that covered the floor of Casa delle Letterature’s courtyard in Rome. Through the use of simple recurring patterns, Ducrot reflects on transcendence, beauty, and the expansive histories of textiles across the world.

Ducrot’s works on paper are often gestural depictions of landscapes or figures. They capture the sentimentality of affection through minimal strokes. Often painted with ink on Japanese and Chinese paper, these works reveal and highlight the material’s natural texture. Ducrot began her Erotici series, depicting sensual yet abstracted renderings of lovers, in the 1990s. While not often shown publicly, these drawings playfully illustrate lovers in action through swift and fluid gestures.

Stage design

Ducrot’s work has also been used as a backdrop to different stages. In 2016, she created Omaggio a Mishima (Homage to Mishima), in reference to Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. Ducrot has also worked with Dior to create Big Aura, an installation that adorned the walls of the fashion house’s haute couture spring-summer 2024 show at the Rodin Museum gardens in Paris.

Isabella Ducrot Exhibitions

Isabella Ducrot has held solo exhibitions at the Le Consortium, Dijon; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Sadie Coles HQ, London; and Capitain Petzel, Berlin.

Recent institutional exhibitions include shows at Museo della Civiltà, Rome, and Le Consortium, Dijon (both 2024), and MAXXI Taormina (2023). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Venice Biennale; Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts; and Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Rome, among many others.

Isabella Ducrot FAQs

Ocula | 2026