Back to Contents...the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy
The International School of Art in Umbria, Italy, is an intensive 6-12 week studio program in drawing, painting and sculpture. The School, founded in 1988, serves developing painters and sculptors from around the world. Internationally distinguished artists teach and critique, and visiting artists and scholars lecture. Students work 40-60 hours a week in the studio and take weekly trips to Rome, Florence, Siena, Assisi, Bologna, Sansepolcro, Perugia and Tarquinia to study and draw from the great art of Italy. Students, teachers and staff live and work together in the tiny hill town of Montecastello di Vibio, just north of Todi, in Umbria, one of Italy's most beautiful regions.
The International School of Art is one of a very few of its kind in Europe or in the United States; a school of modern art with in-depth training in drawing, painting and sculpture. Enrollment is limited to about twenty students per session, with a 5:1 student/teacher ratio; the environment is intimate, offering students many hours of formal and informal contact with faculty mentors.
Thanks to our powerful faculty, the School is rapidly developing a strong international reputation. Students have come to us by personal referral from the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, England, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Israel, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Our students are of diverse ages and backgrounds: undergraduate and graduate art students, artists having completed or considering an MFA program, art professors, working artists, and people who have studied art but because of commitments to work and family have not given themselves the opportunity to develop artistically.
The International School of Art is an ideal environment in which developing artists can completely devote themselves to working and learning, building to a high level of productivity, and for many, a breakthrough.
Back to Contents...the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy
Montecastello di Vibio is 15 kilometers north of Todi, in the province of Perugia, in the region of Umbria. Located an hour and a half north of Rome and two hours southeast of Florence, Montecastello lies on a hilltop, overlooking the lush Tiber River valley.
The cities and hill towns of Umbria and neighboring Tuscany are landmarks of European culture. The landscape is patterned with vineyards, olive groves and sunflower fields, and punctuated with cypresses and umbrella pines. In this environment, you will paint and sculpt under the same light that spawned the Western world's greatest art. Here is the architecture and landscape that inspired Renaissance artists and later masters like Poussin, Ingres and Corot. One can see why the region still attracts artists from all over the world.
A beautifully preserved medieval borgo, Montecastello looks much like it did 500 years ago. A fortress wall surrounds the tiny heart-shaped town, with vast panoramas all around and a tranquil little park at one edge. Within the wall, this delightful village is our campus, with a complex of historic buildings providing all the school's facilities.
Back to Contents...the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy
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The School's curriculum centers on intensive daily studio work, with instruction and critiques by internationally renowned artists. Many are from the faculties of major American and European art schools and universities. The International School of Art invites the influence of artists from all over the world who represent important movements in modern and contemporary art; the School's unifying ideology is that with the right language you can relate to history and create the future.
Our living and working situation in North Central Italy is ideal for an artist; it offers breathtaking surroundings, quiet and privacy, wonderful food, and of course, Italy's rich cultural heritage. In this supportive yet rigorous school environment, one can focus and work intensively, uninterrupted by the demands of daily life back home. Students work in the classroom and studio eight to twelve hours a day, six days a week, and make dramatic progress in their work. Those who stay for both sessions benefit tremendously.
For many artists, the International School of Art is more than a six-week summer program -- it is their continuing professional education. Students come back to the School year after year, continuing the process that deepens their knowledge and strengthens their skills. They become part of a dynamic, evolving international community of artists that reunites each summer, providing support for its members and a forum for exchanging ideas.
The International School of Art stresses drawing as a means of providing a strong foundation for the development of one's individual work. A mastery of drawing enables the artist to recreate and transform experience through the process of discovering and depicting abstract relationships of form, space, interval, contrast and opposition. ISA students sharpen their vision and perception by studying nature and the human figure to find their two-dimensional equivalences. They work to bring the picture to unity through the architectural organization of space and light, while maintaining the integrity of the picture plane and its plastic language. This creative process allows one to go to either abstraction or figuration.
Painters and sculptors draw from the model in a four hour class each morning or afternoon. For the other half-day, painting and sculpture classes work with or without the model. Instructors teach at least twice a week and are accessible for individual consultations and critiques. On non-teaching days, students work in class or on independent work their instructors later critique. After summer class hours, students work outdoors or in their studios, in the excellent late afternoon light. Studios are open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
Visiting artists and scholars lecture several evenings each session, and art history lectures complement our trip schedule. Evenings feature after-dinner discussions with resident faculty and with other artists of international fame who come to Italy for the summer.
Back to Contents...the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy
