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| Before I became familiar with Mario Magnanelli, I became
familiar with his paintings and seeing the delicate snowfall, the pale flowers
and the voicelles countryside, barely lit by a particularly delicate light,
I came to imagine - in terms of the relationship between a man and his masterpieces
- that behind this " chiarista " lyricism there was a thoughtful,
pensive, Morandian man of art, completely dedicated to the silences of the
area of Romagna which borders on the Marche region, bringing together two
cultures, that of farming and that of the sea in a linguistic and truly
lyrical unicum. |
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| And one sees that this is in fact the case when visiting
the studio of Magnanelli in San Giovanni in Marignano near Rimini : it is
clearly obvious that the artist is used to painting in the first light of
dawn over the coastlines of Romagna (try watching the sun rise over the
Adriatic when the sea is at peace "with itself and man") or to
following the bare plateaus to the foothills of the Marche Apennines, which
get the snow late snow late on in winter, towards January: |
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| In his work he paints off, impulsively. But the surface
of his works, despite the impressive atmosphere it is subjected to, maintains
an astonishing harmony of tones and respects that type of cosmogonic law,
which although remains unwritten, is observed by the artist, and which leads
to the "innate progeny" from which the balance of figurative impression
grows: the dynamic lines that Magnanelli brings out from a graphic emptiness
transform the background into a harmony and instinctive whole which also
renders the "mother-idea" from which the artist departs and to
which he seeks to return. |
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| And every time he distances himself from the geometric aridity
of the world, as a reaction, almost due to inertia, he lets himself be taken
over by that description which is free of physical laws, that is to say,
the poetry of colour: |
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| If one is to become familiar with the artist then mention
must be made of his "blue period", which we refer to here not
in order to draw historically improper comparisons, but to better orient
the reader of thesenotes and the viewer of his works on the paths of the
countryside of his land, reinterpreted by the painter as constituent inventions
of a countryside experienced, of stylistic situations which go back to a
new-old "chiarismo". |
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Magnanelli looks at a different countryside,the surroundings
which will come to be, personally his, unmistakable in the style and use
of colour, where-as it is (or as it has been) in the life of the artist,
there is a nuagée stage between past and future, between "existential
elevation" in the sense of living isolated in one's own studio/fortress
surrounded by the affection of one's own works and the future which grows
round about with its modernisms which-alas!increasingly leave less space
for romantique lyricism... and one find oneself with a fervid man of the
world and of culture, a sanguineaous defender of life, that is to say,
life as is lived on the Romagna coast. |
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| Thus, these intimistic scenes, these immersed flowers, these
silet still lives, whilst belonging to the past of Magnanelli, are our future.
There is something metaphysical, ever paradoxical in this statement : yet
in amongst the noise of civilisation of the time and tonal silences of the
works, the choice is "natural", that is to say, the naturalness
that there is in his works. |
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| A palette of intense and silent expressiveness,without doubt
devoted to the most obvious "chiarismo", just a few colours with
while dominating over everything, very realistically carried to a earthly
and laic love, in so far as it suggests naturalistic essence, the scents
of the earth, sun and sea. |
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| And the technical results accentuate this old-modern differentiation;
with white on white creating the "idea of snow", the intense and
yet trasparent floreal shapes; a few brushstrokes put in the sea, a sea
that can only just be made out in a stroke of colour, between the mnemonic
words of the Roman joirneys of youth and the creating of romantic art in
an "age" which has relegated romanticismto the attic. |
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| Except for those who look at suggested ambiences, who can
go and breathe it in the pictures of Magnanelli, together with the smell
of turpentine oil and paint that are so typical when you cross the threshold
into artistic atelier. |
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Donato Conenna "Ambiente 2000",
July1999 |
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