critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri

This time the present artist from Modena spreads from the pages of popular illustrated magazines, from magazines specialized in art and book reviews and from the video, but- above all- from the bookshop windows where makes a fine show a prestigious volume with the reproduction of the works by our artist, shrewdly explained by well-known critics and essaysts. As you have already understood, I'm talking about the painter from Pavullo Walter Mac Mazzieri, 23 years old, flowing hair and beard, thick lenses, cheecks changing in the endless range of red because of the constant starts of a shyness going beyond the limits of awkwardness.
In the volume Renzo Margonari ends his very clear essay recognizing that Mazzieri "is one of the most unique cases in Italian painting during the last ten years"; Enrico Crispolti confirms that he is "a rare case of imaginative violence and concentration"; Enzo Fabiani (the art critic of "Gente") writes a love song in verses for the canvas by the painter from Pavullo.Not bad for a young guy aged 23. But, before success, how much work, how much study, what a moving will to fulfill himself. I dedicate Mac's biographical note- so articulated and varied that it could give ideas for a novel- to the hippies who, only for having been in conflict with the barber, believe they have reached a personality, to the pale and ruffled dissenters who pretend to make revolution but don't despise being maintained by rich parents.
Born at Cà d'Olina near Pavullo on 15th April 1947, he attends the primary school here; but already in his school age, he has to help his family: his father was maimed of an arm during the war and there is little to laugh about with a pension of 14 thousand lire; with some horses his mother collects milk in the country and takes it to the dairy in Montecenere; his elder brother studies at Fiumalbo. And so little Mac goes for mushrooms with his father and does other little services. Then the family moves to Pavullo where the boy attends a secondary school. And here's, as a curiosity for our false revolutionaries, Mac's day: he wakes up at five to distribute, in the village bars, the cakes a pastry cook gives him; at eight, he goes to school; after school he does the washing up in a canteen and gets a meal for it; in the evening he delivers milk door-to-door ( reward:a litre of the least alcoholic white wine).
After the secondary school he attends for some months the "Fine Arts" institute in Modena (as a guest of the friars' boarding house in via Ganaceto), but he isn't at ease among people ("Freedom-he tells Margonari- is living alone").
Come back home he works at the "Arredo" for a year using smithies, files and hammers. For another year -paid by a local entrepreneur who gives him only symbolic rewards- he makes Flemish decorations on the "tondos" for furnishings: the right thing to make his sight already short worse. At last the fellowship with the sculptor Davide Scarabelli and the series of long journeys through Europe and northern Africa. The list is long: all European countries except those behind the Iron Curtain (because of visas and passports) and Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. It's the heroic season for "Waltrin" from Olina: his busiest and most formative season. In fact this wandering has a purpose:to meet new people, to learn new customs but-above all-to visit galleries, museums and artists everywhere. What a great school is the world. But what a hard school is hitch-hiking, leaving with ten thousand lire and, in his rucksack, a jar of honey made by his mother and a holy picture for the emergencies.
The 40° temperature that attacks him in Spain with nobody who accepts to give them accomodation because they haven't got enough pesetas; the night spent in the open on the Biarritz beach ignoring that the high tide would have laid a wet siege to them; the small dolls bought in the department stores and resold at a higher price after having painted them; the small drawings sold during the eight stays in Paris; the drawings made on the square asphalts and Biolchini (arrived to complete the group) who pretends to be a benevolent passer-by and throws the first coin to break the ice; the journey in Africa crossing Spain by a Fiat 500 that has travelled 150,000 kilometres. Every time he gets back home he is slimmer and feverish but with note-books full of notes, with his eyes full of coloured images and new feelings to put into his paintings.
Now Mac is on TV,books and newspapers; The managers of the art galleries and collectors contend for him; but he remains "Waltrin" from Cà d'Olina: a meek and a bit unsociable guy who believes in life and lives in the name of art.

critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri