Mario Mafai

Mario Mafai (12 February 1902 – 31 March 1965) was an Italian painter. With his wife Antonietta Raphaël he founded the modern art movement called the Scuola Romana, or Roman school.

Biography

Mafai left school very early, preferring to attend, with Scipione, the Scuola Libera del Nudo, or free school of the nude, of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. His influences in those years were Roman galleries and museums, and the Fine Arts Library at Palazzo Venezia.

He met painter and sculptor Antonietta Raphaël in 1925, and they married. In 1927 Mafai exhibited for the first time, with a show of studies and maquettes organised by the Associazione Artistica Nazionale in Via Margutta. In 1928 he had a second exhibition, at the XCIV Mostra degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti, as well as a collective with Scipione and other painters, at the Young Painters Convention of Palazzo Doria in 1929.

In November 1927, Mafai and Raphaël moved to 325 via Cavour in Rome, and made a studio there. Within a short time, it became a meeting point for writers such as Enrico Falqui, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Libero de Libero and Leonardo Sinisgalli, as well as the young artists Scipione and Renato Marino Mazzacurati.

See also

• Expressionism
• Francisco Goya
• Chaïm Soutine

Notes

Bibliography

• F. N. Arnoldi, Storia dell'Arte, vol. III, Milan 1989
• I Mafai - Vite parallele, catalogue edited by M. Fagiolo, with biography by di F. R. Morelli
• Enzo Siciliano, Il risveglio della bionda sirena. Raphaël e Mafai. Storia di un amore coniugale, Mondadori, Milan 2005
• Fabrizio D'Amico, Marco Goldin, Casa Mafai : da via Cavour a Parigi : 1925-193, Linea d'ombra, 2004
• Mario Mafai, 1902-1965: una calma febbre di colori, Skira, 2004
• Io non sono un altro - l'arte di Mario Mafai (I Am Not the Other - The Art of Mario Mafai), DVD, Studio Angeletti & Scuola Romana Archive, 2005, directed by Giorgio Cappozzo

External links

• (English) Mafai's works online, on Artcyclopedia.com. ^{Accessed 26 May 2011}
• (English) Mario Mafai, on Artfact.com. ^{Accessed 26 May 2011}
• (Italian) Archive of the Scuola Romana at Villa Torlonia
• (Italian) Archivio Contemporaneo "Alessandro Bonsanti" - The Mario Mafai-Antonietta Raphaël Fund
• (Italian) Mario Mafai and the Scuola romana
• (Italian) The Quadriennale di Roma
• (Italian) History of the Biennale di Venezia
• (Italian) Two Exhibitions on Mafai in Rome and Brescia in 2005
• (Italian) Archivio Contemporaneo "Alessandro Bonsanti" - Mario Mafai Fund
• (Italian) Mafai Gallery, selected work on Settemuse.it, with biography. ^{Accessed 26 May 2011}

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