Mary Cinque: Painting that Tells the Story of the Amalfi Coast
Between Metropolis and the Land of the Gods, Mary Cinque a visual artist who has made this dialogue between opposite dimensions the very substance of her art.
There is a delicate thread connecting the world’s great cities to the “Land of the Gods” – as Agerola, the village in the Monti Lattari mountains suspended between sky and sea, is known. That thread is called Mary Cinque, a visual artist who has made this dialogue between opposite dimensions the very substance of her art. At Hotel Margherita, Mary’s works are not mere decorations: they are open windows onto a vision of the Coast that embraces all its faces, from its historic glamour to its everyday hardships, from the ever-changing light on the water to the wintry silences of nature.
A Childhood Between Different Worlds
Mary Cinque was born in 1979 in Castellammare di Stabia, but her childhood unfolded across three apparently distant worlds: Pompeii, Agerola, and Addis Ababa. At the age of eight, her parents – teachers engaged in international cooperation work in Ethiopia – bought a plot of land in Agerola to raise their children in a more natural and healthy environment, far from the city.
“A reality between countryside and mountain,” Mary recalls, “more contained but with many opportunities to express one’s openness.” Growing up between different cultures shaped her into someone who sees things from unusual perspectives, in what she herself describes as “an adventure in other worlds” – an experience that profoundly moulded her artistic gaze.
Mary’s family carries stories of migrations and multiple belongings: a great-grandfather from Positano, from whom the distinctive surname Cinque derives, and a grandfather who spent much of his life in New York. This inheritance of movement and border-crossing is reflected today in her art, which breathes as much of Italy as of the Anglo-Saxon world.
Training: From Architecture to People
Mary’s artistic journey begins with classical studies and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where she graduates with a thesis on graphic design in Campania. She continues at the Brera Academy in Milan, completing a two-year specialist programme in Visual Arts. In her early works, the primary inspiration is rationalist architecture: she paints buildings, structures, geometries – always devoid of human beings and nature.
“Every morning I would go to Amalfi and cross the coast taking for granted the beauty surrounding me,” she confesses. It was during an environmental volunteer camp, organised by her parents, that she began to understand the extraordinary beauty she experienced every day, almost without seeing it.
A crucial moment arrives at the Brera Academy, when Professor Massimo Bignardi from Salerno – who had watched her grow artistically since 1999 – looks at her works and invites her to focus on the Coast’s landscape. From that suggestion, the Acque Chiare (Clear Waters) series is born, marking her first true dialogue with the territory.
In 2006 she spends three months between Philadelphia and New York, participates in workshops with the Spanish-American artist Isidro Blasco, and exhibits at the White Box Gallery in New York. But it is the London period, between 2017 and 2019, that marks a radical turning point in her work.
London: The Turn Towards Humanity
“In London, the multi-ethnicity and desire to express oneself and show oneself for who one is made a strong impression on my art,” Mary explains. People, initially absent from her works, now become the absolute protagonists. She moves from the paintbrush to oil pastel, in search of a more direct, more visceral dimension.
During this period she is selected among one hundred artists for the inaugural edition of The Other Art Fair in Los Angeles, organised by Saatchi Art, confirming the international dimension of her work.
Carol LeWitt: An Encounter That Changes Perspectives
An extraordinary chapter opens with the encounter of Carol LeWitt, widow of the legendary conceptual artist Sol LeWitt and a patron deeply connected to the Amalfi Coast. Carol hosts artists at her home on the coast, and with Mary a friendship blossoms that goes beyond art.
In 2023, Mary spends five weeks in Connecticut, in the studio that had been Sol LeWitt’s in Chester, where she can dedicate herself entirely to her art and connect with a network of international artists and contacts that continue to nourish and inspire her work.
“Mary sells a great many works in the United States,” says someone who knows her well. “You can feel her love for that country. There is a continuous exchange with Anglo-American culture.” But Agerola always remains her place of calm, of slow rhythm, where she can recharge far from the constant metropolitan stimuli.
The Works at Hotel Margherita: A Profound Dialogue
The relationship between Mary Cinque and Hotel Margherita is built on mutual trust and shared vision. Andrea and Suela, the hotel’s owners, did not simply commission decorative works – they invited Mary to bring her art into the daily life of guests, demonstrating that art can be experienced even in unconventional spaces without being diminished.
Acque Chiare
“Acque Chiare was born from an examination at the Brera Academy,” Mary recounts. “Professor Bignardi saw my works and invited me to focus on the Coast’s landscape. Andrea and Suela invited me to use those clear-water colours on the hotel walls.”
The Acque Chiare series can be found on the ceilings of some rooms and in a special niche: paintings that represent the Coast in its liquid and luminous essence, capturing that Mediterranean light quality which changes constantly. “I worked by the pool, I watched the dawn and the changing light, the sun shifting, the sounds of the Coast,” she recalls. “When I work for them I can nurture a part of myself.”
The Pool Area: The Fisherman and the Mermaid
The work in the pool area recounts the story of the fisherman who falls in love with the mermaid – a narrative that draws on the ancient myths of the Coast, where the boundary between reality and legend has always been fluid.
The Small Paintings: Yoko Ono and Carol LeWitt
Two small oval paintings, placed in two rooms of the hotel, are dedicated to Yoko Ono and Carol LeWitt, both guests of Hotel Margherita on different occasions. Each oval is accompanied by a quotation that bears witness to Suela’s emotional intelligence in her choice of tributes.
Yoko Ono’s quotation reads: “If you dream alone it’s just a dream; if you dream together it’s already a revolution in progress” – a message that perfectly reflects the hotel’s philosophy as a place of encounter and transformation.
The tribute to Sol LeWitt and Carol represents a bridge between American conceptual art and the material beauty of the Coast, between LeWitt’s geometric minimalism and Mary’s landscape painting.
The Restaurant: A Celebration of Local Produce
In the hotel restaurant, Mary has painted the products of the territory: a riot of variety and colour that celebrates the uniqueness of Amalfi Coast produce. Sfusato lemons, tomatoes, anchovies, aromatic herbs – each element becomes part of a composition that is simultaneously still life and declaration of love for this land.
The Coast in Its Many Faces
“I like to think about the history of the coast; I live in the present, but in my thoughts I choose each day to live the coast’s many faces,” she explains.
There are many Coasts in her imagination: the glamour of Jacqueline Kennedy’s Coast, the Grand Tour Coast, the one visited today by international celebrities, but also the Coast of the Marea Art Project gatherings in November where Praiano’s local community participates, the Coast of the back-breaking lemon harvest, that of the young workers who in season commute from Agerola down to the sea each day.
“My bond with the coast is to take all the good and, where possible, try to change things,” she affirms. It is a vision that embraces complexity without idealisation, recognising both the beauty and the contradictions.
Agerola: The Land of the Gods as Artistic Residence
Since 2019 Mary has moved her home and studio to Agerola, the village immersed in the unspoilt nature of the upper coast, closer to the sky than to the sea. “For me Agerola represents a small oasis of calm, but at the same time it gives you the possibility of easily reaching Naples or Amalfi,” she explains.
“It’s as if, from the end of 2019 to today, I have been on a long artistic residency. I am drawing from my archive of photos and sketches all the stimuli that London gave me.” This return to the Coast during the less crowded seasons enriches her profoundly, offering that contemplative dimension necessary to transform metropolitan experiences into works of art.
A Vision of Authentic Tourism
Mary also reflects on tourism and the way the Coast is experienced: “Our history of tourism on the coast is, after all, relatively brief.”
“The way Suela and Andrea approach tourism is different.” It is a form of tourism that does not settle for surfaces, that seeks contact with local art, that values slowness and discovery. A tourism that recognises a fundamental role for hotels: not only to accommodate, but also to act as a bridge between visitors and the cultural soul of the territory.
Mary is grateful to Suela and Andrea, and the feeling is mutual: the hotel is enriched by an art that speaks honestly of this place, without stereotypes, with a gaze that has crossed the world before choosing to return here, to the Land of the Gods.
The Privilege of Everyday Beauty
Mary Cinque knows well the value of slowness on the Amalfi Coast: her art is born precisely from pausing, from observing how the light changes on the water, from registering the sounds of morning, from seeing the Coast in all its seasons, not only the most popular one.
Her works at Hotel Margherita are an invitation to this same kind of presence: to look beyond the postcard, to seek the stories in the folds of the landscape, to recognise that the true beauty of the Coast lies in its capacity to contain different worlds – sea and mountain, tradition and contemporaneity, the local and the international.
At Hotel Margherita we are deeply grateful to Mary Cinque for bringing into our rooms and shared spaces her sincere and complex vision of the Amalfi Coast. Her Acque Chiare, her tributes to extraordinary figures such as Yoko Ono and Carol LeWitt, her celebrations of the territory’s produce are not simply beautiful to behold: they are bridges between worlds, invitations to look more deeply, testimonials that contemporary art can speak of this ancient place without betraying it.
To discover more about Mary Cinque’s work and explore the pieces on display in the hotel, the Hotel Margherita team will be delighted to take you on a small art tour during your stay.
Mary Cinque – Studio in Agerola – For information: contact via Hotel Margherita
Email: info@hotelmargherita.info
Telephone: +39089874628
Whatsapp: +393337166631
Published on 16-Mar-2026
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Mary Cinque: Painting that Tells the Story of the Amalfi Coast
