Giogia de Vivre made her work for the love of it, but not without seriousness or meaning. She was a true amateur in that she cared little for hierarchies or scenes and only ever followed her own instincts. Not unlike many female artists today who feel isolated from the art canon and at the same time exploited and marginalized by lifestyle trends (design blogs and fashion magazines), her work was constantly referred to as illustration or ‘interior decoration’ – making her practice and life more relevant than ever before. Although she (Di Vivere) was relatively unknown during her lifetime, she was an integral part of the pattern woven into the fabric of her times.

For this project Tai Snaith paints the portraits and writes the biography of an important fictious artist well ahead of her time.

Book design (final images) by Wendy Fox

Photography by Matthew Stanton