Topazia Alliata

Topazia Alliata (; 5 September 1913 – 23 November 2015) was an Italian painter, curator, art dealer and writer.

Biography Alliata was born in Palermo to Prince Enrico Maria Alliata di Villafranca, Duke of Salaparuta (1879–1946), and a former opera singer, Oria Maria Amelia "Sonia" Ortúzar Ovalle de Olivares (1892–1981), the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. After graduating from liceo artistico, Alliata studied fine arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo, where she was a fellow student of Renato Guttuso, who portrayed her in several of his early paintings. They were released at the end of the war in September 1945, and returned to Italy in 1946, settling in Bagheria, where Alliata engaged in the family business, the Salaparuta's Crow Wines.

In 1955 Alliata and Maraini decided to separate. However, as divorce was illegal in Italy at the time, they were only able to divorce in 1970. Alliata subsequently moved to Rome, where she continued her work as a painter. In 1959 she sold the family wine business and founded Galleria Topazia Alliata in Trastevere, where she mainly exhibited avant-garde painters, including Carla Accardi, Eugene Charlton, Mario and Egidio de Grossi, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Fabio Mauri, Mohamed Melehi and Lucio Pozzi.

In 1973 Alliata was one of the co-founders of the Guttuso Museum in Bagheria.

In 2014 Alliata published Love Holidays: Quaderni d'amore e di viaggi, a partly photographic autobiography.

In 2016 her work was the subject of a large retrospective at Fondazione Sant'Elia in Palermo.

Works Eight contemporary artists from Rome: Carla Accardi, Eugene Charlton, Mario and Egidio de Grossi, Fabio Mauri, Mohamed Melehi, Muvolo, Lucio Pozzi: selected by the Galleria Topazia Alliata. [Minnesota]: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1963. Exhibition of paintings by Lucio Pozzi, Charlton and Melehi. 1963. Per gli 80 anni di Emilio Villa Roma : Le parole gelate, 1994. Toni Maraini; Topazia Alliata Ricordi d'arte e prigionia di Topazia Alliata, Palermo : Sellerio, 2003. Fosco Maraini; Dacia Maraini; Toni Maraini; Yoi Maraini; Topazia Alliata, Love holidays Milano : Rizzoli, 2014.