Alice Ensabella

Alice Ensabella received her Ph.D. from the University La Sapienza of Rome, in co-direction with the University of Grenoble, in 2017. Her research, supervised by Alain Bonnet and Ilaria Schiaffini, focuses on the rise of an art market around early Surrealist art (1919-1930).

She began this work during her BA and MA in Art History at the University of Florence, analyzing the activity of Parisian art dealers in the 1920s and 1930s. Since 2012, she has been collaborating with the Archivio dell’Arte Metafisica in Milan and since 2013 with the Magnani Rocca Foundation in Parma (working on exhibitions on Campigli, Gino Severini, Giacomo Manzù, Marino Marini, and Paul Delvaux). In 2015 she became a member of the International Network for Young Scholars of the Forum of Art and Market (Berlin, Technische Universität).

In 2016, she assumed charge of documentation at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris and research engineer for the Labex “Le surréalisme au regard des galeries, des collectionneurs et des médiateurs, 1924-1959”. At present, she is an assistant professor at the University of Grenoble teaching Contemporary Art History and running a seminar on the Contemporary Art Market.

Alice has published articles and essays on Surrealist art market (Ricerche di Storia dell’xArte, 2017 – Studi Online, 2015 – 2016) and on the relationship between dealers and artists (Gino Severini. L’emozione, la regola, 2016).

 During her fellowship at CIMA, Alice will reconsider Savinio’s second Parisian period (1926-1933) in a new light, trying to explore in depth his relationships with André Breton and others group’s members, the influences of artists as Max Ernst on his painting, as well as the circulation of his works in the Parisian artistic environment (in private collections or auctions).