Wife of the late Carlo Mazzantini, writer and historian, mother of four daughters: Moira, head of TNA talent agency, Giselda, actress known as Giselda Volodi, Margaret, writer, and Cristina, journalist, Anne Donnelly was born in Belfast in 1932 and then grew up in the midlands of Ireland in County Carlow.
She studied at the college of Art in Dublin (1953), and at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1954). She then spent a year on the island of Lettermullen in the West of Ireland, afterwhich she went to the Ecole Julienne in Paris (1956).
Together with her husband and their four daughters she has lived and worked in many parts of the world. First in France (1956), then in Spain (1956-57) and Morocco (1958-61) before returning to Ireland (1961-63). From 1963 to 1966 they took up residence in Tuscany, from which she and her family moved to Tivoli, next to the ruins of the Emperor Hadrian’s villa, where Anne Donnelly has her studio. In summer she works in Greece on the island of Lefkas in front of Ithaca.
Her poetic and figurative development has been influenced by her travels, her contact with nature and her studies of Renaissance Art.
She is a member of DUNA which is part of the IAWA (International Association of Women Artists).
