ROME EXHIBITIONS AT PALAZZO VENEZIA
- Reviews of all major exhibitions taking place in the past -

Running Exhibition from December 7th 2004 to February 27th 2005

"Mario Mafai. A calm fever of colours"
PALAZZO VENEZIA, ROMA

It has just opened the exhibition "Mario Mafai. A calm fever of colours" in the big spaces of the prestigious roman seat of Palazzo Venezia. There is the exhibition of 88 works considered his best works, which come from museums and private collections, and which show the whole artistic activity of this artist, from the beginning of the 1920 until 1965, year of his death. These works show also his collaboration with Scipione and Antonietta Raphael, and the creation with Roberto Longhi of the "Scuola di via Cavour" in the end of 1920. Mario Mafai (1902-1965) is a painter of landscapes, and often the main character of his paintings is Rome: Rome and its suburbs, Rome during its re-building and the hard period after the World War, its markets and also its Resistance. Mafai's painting is not official but always bound with history; a way of painting which little by little destroys the forms, until the reaching of a vivid colour which is expression, far from the simple representation. In the exhibition there are "Lessons of Piano", prize winner at the Four-yearly in 1935; "Models in the studio", which won the Bergamo's premium in 1940; the cycle of "Imaginations", shown immediately after the liberation of Rome in the exhibition called "Art against brutalities"; the works already shown in his personal room in the Bienal of 1948 and 1958 and that shown in the Galleries "The Comet"( in the end of 1930) and "The Turtle"(1957/1959). It is also possible to see, near the paintings, a little documentary called "I am not another one. The art of Mario Mafai", which talks about the artistic and human story of this painter of the Roman school.