Critical notes on the artistic work of Mario ART.
Review by Cavaliere Giancarlo Alù.
In contemporary art, a sort of psychophysical miracle rarely occurs, a sort of moral and artistic transubstantiation that acts at the level of lifeblood for the birth of authentic talents such as the painter Mario ART. Unfortunately, I do not know his artistic origin, nor his ethical thought, but one thing is immediately clear when reading his paintings: we are in front of a true Artist, an extremely sensitive soul capable of producing principles of interiority that are otherwise untransferable in the form of painting. And the feeling I had was that of finding myself in contact with Paul Cézanne revived, transformed and reinvented by the modernist mind, with the same mediaticity with which, to quote Maurizio Bonicatti, contrary to the philosophy of Impressionism, the image field of a given subject introduces the Artist into a reflective process, whereby the imaginative consciousness finds the unity of judgment in the mirroring of its own dimension, regardless of the other diachronic dimension, that is, historical time, in which he works and to which he therefore belongs. The subjects enhanced by Maestro Mario ART are an abstraction of banal realities, interpreted through an emotional and profoundly vitalizing synergy: the painting “the friends” is a perfect example of this non-search for formal exteriority, but of a reflection, in the philosophical sense of the term. In fact, according to Locke, who complements the Aristotelian concept of “reflection”, it also takes on the meaning of “consciousness” or internal sense, that is, perception of the operations that the soul performs within itself on the ideas received from the senses. In the aforementioned painting, three figures of young girls act in the fullness of their femininity, freshness, ease, with a pinch of arrogance and challenge, smiling and bold. But… they are a reflection of a vision of the Artist, a will and the unconscious emotionality of Mario ART and his Art. The very concept of Maestro Mario ART would need more analysis and cognitive insights, like in the excavation of a diamond mine, than in the limited space-time in which I am writing this short note … And analyzing other works of his, such as the model or the first violinist, once again the formal rationality is upset with the help of the color, so bright and dense at the same time, with summary brush strokes. Rich in humus, pasty and disturbing at the same time. The common reality of a female figure playing a violin is transfigured into colored sounds. In her virtuoso gesture, we can feel the musical elegance of the figure, with purple flashes, almost semiquavers of a context that emerges or sinks into a swirling background. With sudden flashes of light to then make the tones of musical chromaticism disappear in a dark and cloudy context announcing a summer storm. In the other painting “The violinist” I believe that Maestro Mario ART has reached the pinnacle of his artistic expressiveness. Here is truly the essence of Paul Cézanne of the “Card Players” of the Louvre, painted 116 years ago! Mario ART in “The violinist” recreates that formal and spiritual hieraticism woven, intertwined, kneaded with the colors of the soul. Once again, miraculously, the space-time concept expressed in the aesthetic iconography reveals all the sensitivity and expressive mastery of our extraordinary Artist: the violinist is not playing. And yet the music can be heard, very sweet, soft, with melodious and mellow tones, a music that
enters the heart of the reader of the painting. She is static, noble, almost Byzantine, and that gesture of holding the violin and the bow with invisible hands, the standing, dark, elongated body, with the oval face barely hinting at a smile, is of such spirituality and elegance. The formal, the material, and corporeal of the image vanish as if by magic. And as if by magic a harmony of sounds is guessed, and the music can be heard, very sweet, soft, with melodious and mellow tones, a music that enters the heart, the soul of the reader of the painting. The only element that is foreign and yet
so connected, so naturally alive and… Illuminating is precisely a three-light chandelier that functions as a litmus test for the rational radicalization of the non-rational and divinely musical concept of this Work. And this reminds me of a phrase by Beethoven that may have inspired Maestro Mario ART, and which in any case perfectly reflects the image of the “violinist who does not play”: “…and I cannot but despise this world incapable of feeling that music is a revelation superior to all wisdom and all philosophy.”
Critical notes on the artistic work of Mario ART.
Review by Dr. Francesca Mariotti.
Mario ART, painter and poet, hot-blooded and irreverent, original and engaging
a character who between sincerity and amazement seems to play with painting without any
shame, instinctively like a child. His works strike us and silence us for their expressive
power and at the same time for the spontaneity with which
they are made. Images and colors that emerge from dark and impenetrable backgrounds.
Themes, memories, and experiences that have marked and overwhelmed the artist in his deepest
emotion. His “Cat-Women”, mysterious and voluptuous creatures that
merge into a single being, look at us and bewitch us with magical black and
deep eyes. The feline sinuosity of the figures and the warmth of the colors with which they
are made to have the charm of what Magic can arouse, opening windows on to
our most indefinable and instinctive being. In the new cycles addressed, new
themes drag us into ever dreamlike and magical atmospheres, sweetened by
softer colors and Caravaggio shadows, in the “Magic Nights” and among the
“Violinists” by Mario ART. Like a flash, the mind takes us back to numerous works by Chagall upon his
arrival in Paris: in them to, the sky was invaded by a blue spread everywhere. The moon often
illuminated enchanted landscapes, in which floating spouses wandered among characters, delicate
like shadows, playing violins, cellos, and mandolins. And so his “Blanche”
“Duet” and “Moon” Violinists, as if by magic, take shape and are built by
colors that slowly coagulate the light, making them visible. The same emotion and the
same magic in “The Marriage” or “Paris between the two shores” that Chagall created from the
1910’s, becoming the great poet of color that we all know. Mario ART has
managed to clearly show the melancholy of some of his memories, and in his
latest works he shows us a changed color, deep and introspective, in which
we can find ourselves, our most intimate and secret soul. A vein of suffering
thus comes to us through the symphony of his “Violinists”: together with him
we can abandon our fears and our defenses and we can almost take
flight in “Magical Nights”, in which the moonlight makes everything shine again. A
different light from the reds and blues and yellows that illuminated the “Cat Women” or the
“Embraces” of the past, a light that, like the night, warms the heart, allowing us to
dream again. From the awareness of pain and loss, delicate and warm “Portraits” spring forth, elegant in the melancholic figures represented. … And the poet in Mario ART emerges again and regenerates himself in the elegance of truth revealed by feeling, his declared “uncontrollable inner impulse”.
… Mario ART transports us among his figures of women, mythological and historical, outside the patterns of rationality. In the dreamlike and sensitive world of those who perceive the soul and the strength of feeling, expressing it with determination and sincerity through the color, the gesture, the movement that fixes it on the canvas. His new creatures float and rise in the ether with whirlwinds of red, black, yellow, green, purple. Following the impulse of the artist’s soul, which becomes an icon of a way of being captured in the very moment in which it was lived…
Review by Dr. Rita Caruso
“Always”
Always. As in a fairy tale that has always been told, the story of
Mario ART – through his works – has always read a moment of eternity. “The performance
of the work” describes: the objective time that stops, highlights, in the
static scansion of the syllables of silence, the… Subjective. In the dynamics
of the deepest unconscious. (Castello Sforzesco – Ferrara November 17, 2007 –
“Orchestra’s Evocation”) Sounds of an orchestra that vibrates The poetry of being in a
concert of violinists. Single souls that find themselves in the essence of sound,
expanding in the ether. The virtual notes, tuned in sweet sounds of luminous
presences, transform “the object into a subject”. The lens of vision (
of the installation) distills, in the definition of the mystical image of the arcane, a
drawing of multiple figures, that dance, singing in the mind of the imagination.
Intrinsic strength in the art of Mario ART. The evident result that the Artist obtains,
ranging in the creation of the scratching – cat women – with his brush that
captures in an instant, the feminine nature. Reflecting its intensity, it suggests
to the interlocutor, a stimulus of high emotional impact. The colors then,
move in a rush, in the immense wave of the ocean of the landscapes, which illustrate a
vision in movement and are placed, floating, between sky and sea. There the
stable border of the earthly space is only perception. The execution transfers
to the observer an indecipherable identity of a story, in the history of knowledge. The
painting, composed of occult desires… Wanders in the casbah of the metropolis, to
subsequently, make us fly in the vortex of his cloud-houses. At times, they are
passionate stars and… on the other hand, they reveal – in the bell towers of the dream –
the reality of children.
A spirit that knows how to interpret fairy tales as the placement of a real concept of
survival of the collective imagination. It indicates: the springing of ideas
as a source of growth and basis of life. After the vastness of this symbolic space,
Mario ART leads us by the hand, in his cheerful “stories of bars among friends”.
We all find ourselves together with his characters, involving us in the facts that
illustrate stories. We talk… sitting at the tables of the simplicity of every day.
An atmosphere rich in that everyday life that pays homage to the interpretation of the
synthesis of the “happiness of being”. For having described, day by day,
the path of man that manifests itself in the day of always, accompanies us in the
place of everywhere… Mario ART paints with the art of the Master and with
the sensitivity of man, giving us, in the hourglass of time of… always…
a welcome project of art always… forever…