critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri

Among the young Italian artists who, keeping faith in painting, are trying to say something new, Walter Mac Mazzieri distinguishes himself for the extraordinary world he portrays, for his native qualities and his unique imagination, which lead him to paint pictures amazing for their enigmatic beauty. On towers of red towers, you can see men with huge hands who stare astonished or tearful, while big and soft doves listen to them and ugly small animals move around their feet or try to climb up their legs.These are scenes of a dream-like apocalypse, of a visceral and distressing hell, sometimes unfriendly, where everything (except the pleading eyes) has horribly lost harmony and dimension.
As you can see, we are in the field of surrealism; that's to say in front of "the most disturbing exterior appearances" so valued by the Bretonian movement, and it's easy, while watching Mazzieri's paintings, to remember Max Ernst and Savinio; Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon for what is reminiscent of symbolism.Yet this twenty-two-year-old young man succeeded in promoting the themes of those masters with admirable and surprising intuitions; he is now so close to maturity and independence that they will confirm him as the creator of some of the most distressing images in contemporary painting.
I came to Pavullo, in the area near Modena, to meet Mazzieri in his studio and I found a fair-haired, kind and a bit scared guy . On the walls some of his pictures painted with great meticulousness and skill and where red, violet and blue colours dominate. I tried to understand some of the mysterious reasons why he came to these incredible images. And first I asked him some questions about his life.
"I was born" Mazzieri answers" near the river, at Cà d'Olina, in the mountains, in a small group of houses inhabited by seven or eight peasant families. Till ten I lived in those stone and wooden houses. My parents kept some horses and a small piece of land with my brother. Every evening we rode our horses and picked up milk in the most isolated houses, to which we arrived covering impossible paths. I used to spend my days by myself, with pigeons, cows, goats and ants.With them I used to have odd dialogues lasting for hours. Then , in the evening, I used to draw those animals by heart. I thought the world ended with those mountains, and that beyond there was the desert and the sea.The school was far and I didn't love it much: because of it, I had to interrupt my dialogues with the animals. Well: the doves and the animals you see in my pictures are memories of that period. In fact,one of my favourite themes is man talking to doves, whereas the town in the background is like a threatening monster".
"And why have almost all your characters something monumental, huge hands and feet, out of all proportion to the rest of the body, as in some frescos of the great South-American school?".
"This is a childhood memory,too:When I was a child I used to look at peasants' and mountain people's big hands and I was almost afraid of them.So I held them as permanent elements in my work".
" Did you travel every now and then?"
"I travelled a lot. It's one of my passions.After attending for three months the Art Institute Venturi in Modena and having fled desperately from there, I worked for two years, till seventeen, in a small factory here in Pavullo:then I decided to see the world.I used to leave alone or, sometimes, with two friends of mine, who were sculptors, with five or ten thousand lire in my pocket. I used to hitch-hike, in this way I travelled in almost all European countries, visiting museums and galleries. To get a living, I used to draw on pavements and I earned some money.I visited various areas of Africa, too: this was the most exciting and the most profitable trip, because, when I came back I made up my mind about being a painter only".
"Almost all the artists of your age paint abstract or "poor" or pop pictures. How and when did you choose such a different itinerary? Do you feel a poet of the present or an artist recalling the past?"
"In my opinion", Mazzieri answers " the artist must be the protagonist of his time and attain, in absolute freedom, the images his imagination and masters offer him.A painter mustn't describe, but reconstruct man through a poetically lived and reinvented action. In my opinion poetry comes when inside us there's the habit to be poets: that is to say when we are ready to believe and suffer and prepared to everything for it. Yes, my way of painting was defined, during my personal or collective exhibitions, as surrealist, realistic-visionary,etc.. However that may be, as I previously said, I paint what I have seen and loved: animals and peasants and I try to plunge them, as dominating figures, in a dream and legend athmosphere: very similar to my mood when I was listening to fairy-tales and legends. This rievocative standpoint developed when nostalgia for that extraordinary world occured.Of course, to think carefully, my paintings can be disturbing, sometimes unappealing: but if you listen to yourself and look inside yourself, you'll realize that inside us, whether you like it or not, there's something extraordinary,imaginative, ambiguous, anguishing and dream-like; nevertheless dominated by a central image, by a strength that prevents us from wrecking in fear. A strength that is faith in man, love for nature, ability to understand what's going on and what will happen in the "undiscover'd country"of Shakespearian memory."
"Did reading help you in your work? And what did you read?"
I've always read a lot and I also wrote poems. The authors? All of them, from those who were similar to me like Huysmans to contemporary poets.But it wouldn't be right to say I was influenced by literature. I studied for duty and curiosity, but I've always given freedom to my imagination. I hope it will remain keen and bright for many, many more decades."
Mazzieri shows me some paintings, starting from his first portraits: his grandfather,some of his girl friends. They look like reproductions of old photos, touching in their naivety.Then bigger paintings,with references to fauves and to the expressionist painters. But here's the first outbreak: the painting entitled Poetry of wind and sacrifice, which represents a man sitting on an egg and with a soft white dove on his head. Near him a big egg from which water-drops fall down; then a half-hidden face and at last a blue dove drinking milk in a white bowl. It's Mazzieri's turning point: he throws himself in an orgy of women and doves, small monsters and horses. Siqueiros, the other South-American masters and some marvellous Medieval figures come to mind.
And now an historic character, the Longobard king Rachtis who, before becoming a Benedectine, tears his crown from his head: a crown similar to a small town inhabited by monsters; then the admirable composition entitled A sun sphere dominated by a tiger that, from the towers of a decayed town, barks against a man and a dove. There's the sense, the weight of a deep unintelligible mystery;here, like in other canvas, you can have the sensation that something has happened,something irrecoverable that crumbles or make everything rot. Only the characters' eyes remain clear, even if everything around is scream and decay; even if hands and arms seem to burst out because of the great effort sustained.
But it's impossible to describe these paintings, also because they hit your soul like burning arrows and recall the sad and reddish dance of the ignis fatuuses. Walter Mac Mazzieri, however, has been able to understand and portray something extraordinary and to paint it with masterly skill: and if well begun is half done, it's right and, first of all proper, to believe that he's going to have one of the most extraordinary and deepest days.

antologia critica

walter mac mazzieri