Artist Mario Madiai lives in Tuscany in a characteristic farmhouse surrounded by vineyards and the scent of the sea, immersed in a surrounding nature that exerts a continuous source of inspiration and stimulus.
He was born in 1944 in Siena but spent most of his life in Livorno. This city allowed him to discover the light: one of his unmistakable signs. Siena that allowed him to have as masters Duccio di Buoninsegna and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The classics that will be his essential school. A happy story that of Madiai who, still a boy, begins to make his first drawings, then watercolours, then paintings, immediately welcomed with full favour.
He practises in his mother’s tailoring, with threads, fabrics, papers, coloured chalks, scissors, glues. In short, a real laboratory at his disposal that allows him to give free rein to his imagination and creativity. The most clever critics pointed him out from the beginning for his extraordinary creative skills, including him amongst the most accredited and prepared artistic exponents. The paintings and all his works combine informal and abstract without apparent continuity but with an exceptional result. Animated by a strong lyrical impulse, he represents the surrounding world through an intense and happy production.
Madiai transfers all of himself in painting. His is a painting that demands sentimental adhesion and emotional intrigue. “From emotion to obsession” in fact is the title of this exhibition that the Mazzoleni Foundation wanted to promote and host in the gallery of Alzano Lombardo. In his works at times appear movements of rotation and joints of planes with schematism of still life and with an interpenetration of colours, blue and red, which make the images represented harmoniously. Twisted lines softened by delicate touches of colour and material.
Mario Madiai’s creation
Or a succession of threads that meet and mark the depth of life. They are a sort of overlapping of thicknesses with unpredictable, but ordered, openings on the world. They question us about the depth of space and the human soul. It is a new mental space that creates a new dynamic. An artist can be recognized by the way the colour rests on the canvas. How not to recognize the roses of Madiai. What is striking in all his works is the universe of colours lying on the bottom of each canvas. The creation is entrusted to the boxes enriched with a sort of warp made of threads, papers and fabrics, and when he prepares the canvases where the roses come to life. Roses of all colours, without stems, roses that capture us by the light they give off.
His painting is a condensate of warm material that reveals itself as greedy and receptive. With an innate capacity for synthesis he manages to penetrate the hidden truths of both men and nature. An empathetic person has always had to reckon with a sort of rebellious soul. Freedom is a way of life. Freedom is the firm pivot of human dignity. These are its cornerstones. Many different themes and subjects are told and investigated: the homage to the Vespa, the basins with flowers and water, the landscape of the Val d’Orcia, the Venetian Interior, the Florentine Interior and the mythical roses.
Pinocchio as a Main Theme
But one character, in particular, has always continued to ignite his imagination and exert a continuous solicitation: Pinocchio. Hundreds of paintings made from the 70s to today inspired by the story The Adventures of Pinocchio: the story of a Puppet by Carlo Collodi written in 1881/’83. A piece of fiction that has amused, threatened, moved, frightened and passionate generations of children and adults. The Puppet with the Heart is the title of this intense and rich work on Pinocchio. Madiai floods us with compositions with Geppetto, the Blue Fairy, Lucignolo, Mangiafuoco, the Cat and the Fox, the Judge, the Cricket, the Snail and all the other characters of the story. One of the most famous fairy tales in the world, from children to adults, from the widespread diffusion throughout Italy and the world, which has largely taken up ancient narrative elements and spread in different cultures and traditions.
With an innate capacity for synthesis Madiai manages to penetrate the hidden truth of both men and nature. His canvases are deformed and transformed: the canvas becomes a scene where characters, flowers, objects play in the limelight. Nature for Madiai is not an objective reality, but a category of thought. And so all his subjects are on the verge of overturning and transforming into something new. They are alive with a visible tremor and give meaning to the incalculable immensity of the universe.
Mario Madiai’s Exhibition at the Mazzoleni Foundation
Exhibition at the Mazzoleni Foundation from 22 February to 15 March.
The exhibition, which will be inaugurated on Saturday 22 February in the presence of the artist from Livorno, can be visited every day from 9.00 to 13.00 and from 15 to 19.30. Saturday morning opening, Sunday closed.
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by Patrizia Turini