Once the refuge of artist Brian O’Doherty, Casa Dipinta is an Umbrian house immersed in colour and full of history
In the ancient heart of 13th-century town of Todi in Italy lies the Casa Dipinta (the painted house), a home that became a refuge for the Irish conceptual artist Brian O’Doherty and his wife, art historian Barbara Novak, amid political turmoil in the 1970s. O’Doherty died in 2022 but his home has become a museum and tribute to the imagination, experimentation, and Celtic origins of the artist.
The couple were motivated to explore Italy and later buy the house in the wake of the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry in 1972. After those events, Todi became place where they could escape from the anger and violence engulfing Northern Ireland – a space in which to create and rest. O’Doherty, a pacifist by nature, former doctor, teacher and art critic, as well as author of nonfiction texts on art, also decided that “there would be no more” and became “Patrick Ireland” in response to the killings – an alias that symbolised his roots (although, in 2008, he decided to go back to being O’Doherty).
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