Farewell to the Venetian actress Grazia Maria Spina: a life of arts, marked by beauty
Cinema, TV, theater: a brilliant and intense career, in which gossip also had space. She passed away at the age of 89
Messaggero
March 13, 2025
I am a Venetian actress. It is perhaps to my city that I owe my profession: the Theatre. The knowledge of Venetian has helped me a lot to interpret the works of what is certainly our greatest playwright: Carlo Goldoni. I was still attending the Art School at the Academy of Venice, when the director of the University Theatre of Ca' Foscari, Giovanni Poli, wanted me in a role in "Le donne gelose" by Carlo Goldoni and in Rosetta in "Con l'amore non si scherza" by Alfred de Musset. Certainly, at the time, I was more interested in the world of painters; my teachers: Saetti and Cesetti”.
This is how Grazia Maria Spina wrote about herself, about her career, her artistic experiences, the meaning of a path. One of the most beautiful and well-known actresses of a distant Italy, from the economic boom, has died. Goldonian actress of the highest level, she was 89 years old. Her golden period goes from the end of the fifties to the early eighties. A brilliant and intense career, in which gossip also had space: a relationship with the director Pasquale Campanile party, an unveiling service in October 1970 for Playmen magazine. In 1997 she received the honor of Commendatore.
She had set up her own website, years ago, in which she tells her story. "I used to go to the house of the great abstract painter Mario De Luigi, because I went to school with his daughter Caterina, still my great friend and talented art historian. In their house I met the painter Tancredi, who was innocent as a child and then under contract to the collector Peggy Guggenheim. Along the Zattere I saw De Pisis, Guidi, Carena and Vedova walking in the sun. If I hadn't, almost for fun, started acting, I would have tried to follow their path and paint. But by then the great passion for cinema had broken out. I participated in 33 films, not all of them beautiful, but certainly decent. In particular, one is dear to me and every now and then they broadcast it on TV: "Totò Against the Black Pirate". Probably, if it hadn't been for Totò, I would probably hardly not be remembered; but Totò was there. And he has a clear, affectionate, admiring memory of him”.
In the cinema she was also in “Rugantino” with Adriano Celentano. On television she was a regular presence of what today we would call fiction, and which were then scripted. She won the audition in Milan for the production of "The Lady of the Camellias" (role of Micia) by A. Dumas, then added this medium to theater and cinema. On TV she is remembered in "The Adventures of Nicola Nickleby" by C. Dickens (scripted), "The late Mattia Pascal" by Pirandello (scripted), "Life with Father and Mother" with Paolo Stoppa and Rina Morelli (script), "David Copperfield" by C. Dickens with Giancarlo Giannini (script), "Whoever You Are", "The Return of Casanova" by Schnitzler, "The Woman of Flowers", many comedies, but also "Sanremo 1965" with Mike Bongiorno, "Biblioteca di Studio Uno", "Dizionarietto musicale".
In the theater she has worked alongside the greatest: Renzo Ricci, Salvo Randone, Memo Benassi, Alberto Lionello, Lina Volonghi, Vittorio Gassman, Giancarlo Sbragia, Aroldo Tieri, Alberto Lupo, Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Lilla Brignone, Eva Magni, Diana Torrieri, Lia Zoppelli, Valeria Valeri.
Vittorio Gassman was looking for a young actress to replace Anna Maria Ferrero in Trieste, in Anouilh's "Ornifile". “That very comedy I made my debut at La Fenice in Venice. It would seem like a fairy tale, and perhaps it was the most beautiful fairy tale of my life. In twenty months, I had made an acrobatic leap: from the small cold and uncomfortable theaters to the large theater where prose was rarely hosted, mainly the house of music. It would seem like a fantasy of my mind and instead there are many witnesses: my Venetians, my parents, my brothers and the gratifying theater critics... I returned to La Fenice in 1968 with Goldoni's "One of the Last Evenings of Carnovale"; and with two shows by the Teatro Stabile di Genova, directed by Luigi Squarzina, with which I then toured the whole world, they had been so successful: Paris, London, Vienna, Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)”.
Starting in 1991 she stopped acting: in her life, as in a circle, art had returned: she had become an appreciated painter, because "No one escapes their destiny", as she commented with a smile. She had exhibited in Rome and Cortona (where she had moved), developing works with collage and mixed media. A life of arts, marked by beauty.
SPINA, Maria Grazia (
Born: 6/3/1936, Venice, Veneto, Italy
Died: 3/13/2025, Padua, Veneto, Italy
Maria Grazia Spina’s western – actress:
Samson and the Slave Queen – 1963 (Isabella de Alazon)
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