CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Amelia Gambini Rossano, known by her stage name Memè Olivi, was born in Senigallia on 14 September 1922. Her mother, Else Vignoli-Manfrini, attended a classical grammar school and then studied medicine until her third year, whilst her father, Giovanni Gambini Rossano, having been wounded at Caporetto, returned from the front, resumed his studies and graduated in civil engineering.
The eldest of eight siblings, Memè enjoyed a peaceful childhood until, in 1930, an earthquake reduced Senigallia to rubble, causing two entire floors of the building where they lived to collapse. Miraculously, Memè and her mother escaped the fall of a ceiling beam. Following this catastrophe, her father rebuilt the building but refused to continue living there. The family therefore moved to a villa outside Porta Lambertina, which the engineer built from solid reinforced concrete.
From her earliest years, Memè showed an innate talent for drawing, which her open-minded father decided to encourage by enrolling her at the Institute of Fine Arts for Book Illustration and Decoration in Urbino. At that time, it was rare to allow such a young girl, barely fourteen, to leave her family to study in another city and pursue her vocation.
« It doesn’t matter whether art gives us the truth; it is enough that it teaches us to find it. »
Memè Olivi Urbino 1937