Francesca Vivenza was born in Rome, Italy, in 1941.
She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (Brera) in Milan, Italy, in 1966.
She lives and works in Toronto, Canada, since 1970 and holds a dual citizenship.
Vivenza is a recipient of Grants from Canada Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.
From 1992 to 1998, Vivenza was the Canadian editor and writer for NEXT-Arte e Cultura, an international art magazine published in Rome, Italy.
Vivenza has participated to International touring print exhibitions with Open Studio, Toronto and Artist’s Books with Il Gabbiano-Arte Contemporanea, La Spezia, Italy.
She has initiated local, national and international exhibitions and projects.
Among them: A Sextet from Toronto (Harbour Magazine, Montreal); The Order of Things and Metalogos, with W. M. Sutherland; The Forest for the Trees and Home Invasion – videos by artists, with A. O’Callaghan and J. Belcourt Salem (the intersperse curatorial collective); History and Other Stories (Palazzo Morelli-Bugna, Villafranca di Verona, Italy – George Brown House, Toronto).
Francesca Vivenza’s first Solo exhibition was in Trento, Italy, in 1970.
Others include Olga Korper, The Koffler, Workscene, Lonsdale Gallery, in Toronto. The Gallery, Brock Centre for the Arts, Brock U (now Rodhman Hall Art Centre), St Catherines; The Gallery, U of T, Scarborough (now Doris McCarthy Gallery); Cambridge Gallery (now Cambridge Centre for the Arts); Art Space in Peterborough, in Ontario, Galleria Astrolabio, Messina, Italy.
She was invited to participate to Group Exhibitions at The Art Gallery of Hamilton, (Word Perfect; Prosperity Returns: The Oral Tradition in Painting); the Tree Museum, Muskoka (Shelter Inside-Out. Her work, Outpost, was published on the cover of Espace Sculpture, Montreal, 2004 ); Harbourfront (Inside the Studio, Artists with their Children), Robert Birch Gallery (now Birch Contemporary), Cold City (Hyponoia), Toronto.
An FX video, Mother’s Tongue, with narration in English, was shown in 2002 at the X Arcipelago Film Festival of New Images in Rome, Italy. Its Italian counterpart, Il giorno del lungo viaggio alla finestra, an e-book , was published in 2016 in limited hard copy edition, by Il Faggio editore, Milan, Italy.
In 2015, Vivenza was invited to participate to Imago Mundi, a project sponsored by Luciano Benetton, representing Canadian artists from Central Canada and the Atlantic Provinces. The catalogue, published in 2016, is curated by Francesca Valente with an essay by Peggy Gale.