Home >> Art in Need >> What can I help restore now? >> View of Olevano by Antonietta Raphael Mafai >> The happiness of landscape
Raphael Mafai's View of Olevano on display at the Museo Novecento
The happiness of landscape
| SHARE |  |  |
"We are dealing with an exceptional sensitivity toward color." This is how critic Corrado Pavolini described Raphael Mafai's work in 1929. "This artist senses the wealth of color inherent in everything… landscape, the sky, people. The color spectrum she spans has so many hues that the very fabric of her paintings is constantly varying and new. No one knows how she harmoniously combines just the right amount of spontaneity in her relationships. It is rare—even in praiseworthy paintings—to see canvases that have been so completely 'painted' without breaks or lacunae. This happiness and freshness of color is translated into the Roman landscape in curious ways, with a flair that is purely Russian… Beyond their apparent strangeness and expressionist feel that originates in her direct and sincere gaze, and not from cerebral abstractionism; All of these paintings demonstrate the earnest originality of her temperament as a painter."
(C. Pavolini, In 'Mostre romane'. Antonietta Raphael, in 'Il Tevere', 1929).
(C. Pavolini, In 'Mostre romane'. Antonietta Raphael, in 'Il Tevere', 1929).