A History of Artists and Sirens

 At the beginning of the 20th Century, Mikhail Semenov, a Russian writer and art dealer, lived in a converted mill above the beach of Arienzo. In April 1917, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau visited him in the company of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev and choreographer Leonid Massine. Gilbert Clavel, a swiss intellectual who was part of the futuristic movement and a friend of Fortunato Depero, was in Positano at the same time. This encounter of the Slavic world, France, Italy, Switzerland and the classical Roman and ancient Greek culture, became a fertile creative nexus, one that embodied a profoundly romantic, highly cultured aesthetic and poetic vision of the world.

During the '50s, the Australian born artist Vali Myers came and lived in a 12th century abandoned little cottage in a forest near Positano, defying conventions as the free soul she was, and forging the hippy movement in her wake.

Many more artists populated this area at different times, fascinated by the extreme beauty of these places. Painters, writers, intellectuals, philosophers.

Le Sirenuse Positano collections pay affectionate homage to all the artists and creative minds that not only enlightened the history of Positano, Amalfi, and Capri, but laid the original foundations for its popular culture, lifestyle, and taste. A collection was dedicated to Vali Myers, another to Picasso and the Russian ballets, and another to a painter and philosopher who lived in Capri in 1910-13 called Dieffenbach. Stay tuned for more…