Prof. Francesco Carelli

 

 

Oil on canvas “Agra. Casello degli Adamini”

Mario Mafai was an Italian painter, initiator, in 1929, with Scipione (Gino Bonichi) and Antonietta Raphaël, of an artistic group that was called “Roman School”. He soon left regular school to attend, with Scipione, the Free School of the nude at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. His career and his poetics remained closely linked to Rome, both in themes and in studies and in frequentations. Raphaël was a painter and then sculptress and was linked with Mafai through a long affective and artistic association and also three daughters.

In 1928 he exhibited at the XCIV Exhibition of Amateurs and Cultors of Fine Arts, and he made a new public appearance, with Scipione and others, at the 1929 Conference of Young Painters at Palazzo Doria. – impressionism. Those were very creative years of great debates. In Rome, frequently, they attended the Osteria Fratelli Menghi, a well-known meeting point for painters, directors, screenwriters, writers and poets between the 40s and 70s and organized exhibitions with Scipione. The works of some artists of the Roman School then leaved for a traveling exhibition in the United States.

The thirties were years of intense work for both Mafai and not lacking in recognition: in 1931, he exhibited at the I Quadriennale in Rome; in 1932 she exhibited at the XVIII Venice Biennale; in 1935 the II Quadriennale in Rome hosted 19 solo exhibitions of artists, including that of Mafai with 29 paintings; the event sanctions her position and earns him a prize of 25,000 lire (those were the years in which they sang “If I could have a thousand lire a month” ..).
And in the meantime, he painted and exhibited: in San Francisco (1935), in the traveling exhibition “Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Painting”, in Rome, at the Galleria della Cometa (personal, 1937), in Milan at the Galleria Grande (1939) and again in 1940 (solo show at the Barbaroux Gallery). In 1939 he moved with his family to Genoa, to free Antonietta from racial discrimination. War looms, and in his paintings the color darkened, the figure twisted, the memory of Goya appeared and Grosz’s shadow in the figures. These are the years in which he met Giacomo Manzù and Guttuso. In ’48 he was back in Venice for the 24th Biennale, which set up his own personal of works produced from 1938 to ’47. In the period 1949-1950, he agreed to participate in the formation of the important Verzocchi collection on the theme of work.