Titina Maselli
December 3rd 2016 - March 19th 2017
curated by Chiara Bertola
Elegant and cosmopolitan, Titina Maselli (Rome, 1924-2005) is one of the most original Italian artists of the twentieth century. Hers is counter-current art. She rejected easy options and did not pander to the fashion of the day or market diktats: she did not have the backing of one particular gallery.
Her work expresses a personality that is out of the ordinary, to the extent that the ‘character Titina’ overshadowed her sophisticated production, which remained unknown for many years and was all but ignored by the critics. A free spirit, Titina is an artist who defies categorisation. Whenever she was asked what art was, she would reply: “The only justification”.
The Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice dedicated an exhibition to Titina Maselli, curated by Chiara Bertola, that reconstructed her poetics through around thirty works, which retraced the themes and styles of her extremely personal language.
A selection of works in oil and acrylic from the 1950s and 1960s were on show, in which we could see the artist’s material and textural attention borrowed from Roman expressionism, such as the images of the footballers in action taken from sports papers, or the big nocturnal skies of her city.
ln proposing a Titina Maselli exhibition, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia continued its work on cultural heritage, with the aim of rediscovering artists who have fallen into oblivion or are rarely seen or studied. Focussing on a heritage that has escaped us or is submerged means taking stock of the present and with that part of the past which never actually passes. It means creating new categories and offering new vitality in order to deal with the lack of meaning which seems to have taken over the world.
The exhibition was realized with the support of Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia.
