Photo-Therapy Day 2019: Roberto Calosi

Roberto Calosi 

Psychotherapist, Art Therapist Member of ICAAT 

International Coordination of Anthroposophic Arts Therapies – Florence 

I was born in Chianti, between Florence and Siena, the eldest of three children of a farmer's family.

Later in life I returned there with my wife and children to take care of my old mother as my father had already died. I inherited from him the sense of taking care of other people.

Professionally I had my first spiritual father, Luigi Adamo, who guided me through classical studies, from secondary school until I took my Master Degree with honors on Psychology at Padova University.

The second Guide was Fiorenza de Angelis, Painter. We painted together from 1978 to 2004.

Thanks to her, I was introduced to Anthroposophy.

For many years I had the pleasure of being the President of the Art Therapy Institution “Scuola di Luca”, and later also responsible for the Waldorf School in Florence.

I have retired after having worked for 30 years at Florence Health State Corporation as Psycho-Oncology Department Leader both in hospitals and in hospices.

It was in this environment where I met Ayres Marques. We have conducted several Hospice and Palliative Care training programmes for volunteers. I have been an active member both of the his “Right to the End – Living Well Festival”, as well as of the “GRIFO” – Photo-Therapy Research Group.

As an Art Therapist, member of ICAAT – International Coordination of Anthroposophic Arts Therapies, I have been offering Art Therapy workshops in Italy and abroad.

In the last years I’ve been taking part in Integrated Expressive Arts Therapies training programmes and researches.

During this workshop I would like invite you to experiment colours' qualities, specially their movement qualities. That is to say the capacity that colours have to activate our senses and to set in motion our emotions.

It will be proposed an exercise in which we shall try and overcome the polarity that exists between yellow and blue by using a red pigment. That is similar to the itinerary which each one of us moves across, between earth and sky, by composing our own biography.

Isaac Newton described the physical quality of the colours (refraction angle) on Optics, in 1700. A century later, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe conceived the emotional quality of colours as the result of the struggle of light in its fight against darkness (The theory of Colours). At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Rudolf Steiner found in the primary colours the movement quality, that is to say, the spiritual dimension of colours, as light manifests itself in three basic components.

As much as after-image is both a physical and a soul-phenomena, so it happens to what regards the health.

In both cases there is a natural search for balance, harmony, adjustment.

The challenge, both artistic and therapeutic, is to apply a movement which may bring to life the image we all are ourselves.

And I believe we all are after-images of something much higher than we can imagine.