From Maria Savino’s works clearly emerge informal traces, originally and creatively revisited by her. In addition to this a remarkable technical capacity expressed in a relaxed use of the matter. The artist often makes reference to social themes, linked to ecology, and she denounces the consumerism. This shows a considerable civic courage and high ethical qualities. Unusual and rare features, especially nowadays. Currently, in fact, it spreads superficiality and carelessness. In her artistic production it’s evident also the mystic element of religious inspiration. A presence that stimulates the thought to inner reflection. I think Maria Savino can be numbered among the most innovative contemporary artists: her artistic research is constantly evolving and transforming. For this reason I am sure in the future her art will reserve us positive surprises.

Thoughts

Maria Savino has painted walls. Walls that close in front of us who look at them. Walls that close in their apparent absence of perspectives, of skies even only imagined. She has painted walls with the lenticular precision of a German monk intent upon his book many hours. But she has put in the sense of a matter that stands out and never fragments. Given by the sense of a power that opens up in front of us and consigns us, whole, the fullness of living. These walls, of all colours of the world, are kneaded of days, events, hopes. Maria Savino uses the painting as a diary, pages of a confession she is not afraid to declare. She has the most material informal painting as stylistic reference, but then she engraves the unsaid and the unutterable of the existence. She believes in painting as an inevitable fact, never. She believes in painting as a declaration of love, instrument to give voice to a story. If not tales by overheated and trembling cipher, what are these walls in apparent state of suspension? If not the waiting of the event, its expected being what are they? Walls like past memories, intrusion in the present and future prediction. Blackboards on which stand out, eyeing, a keyword and so the world offers us, asks us sharing. Blackboards on which impressing all about us, space and time, places and faces. Blackboards that don’t reflect but keep in the matter, used wisely by Maria Savino. Matter that apparently denies in a point instead of offer itself. Matter that receives inside itself as a maternal womb. This female function is fully expressed in this painting. All welcoming, all including. The matter that once boiled in its primordial substance, now it blows over in wide slits that nevertheless, by all the force of the prevision, announce light, clearness of invisible air, implacable and very pleasant horizons. The matter which is composed this painting takes, in its being, all the time, all the apparition of that time. And finally this the miracle subtended to Maria Savino’s work of texture: painting the time, its stretching, its mysterious appearing, its flooding in the life and universe, painting all this while it paints a wall that apparently locks everything. Closed matter that secretly carries horizons.

Walls and skies

And, among the youngest, Maria Savino, who, after the Biennale experience, has thinked to pay tribute to a big Umbrian artist: Alberto Burri. So she has prepared a series of “blacks”, luminous and bright, lighted by yellow and gold inlays that bring to life the matter, by an exercise of absolute formalism, in the spirit of international Gothic masters, that absorbed all light in the gold bottom. So Savino’s artistic research becomes mystic, by an attraction of glance toward a dark that send light, as in the experience described by Juan de la Cruz. Savino takes together painting and conceptual art, following a constant formal rigour in times of disorder and chaos. Also in the polychrome inlays occurs again the lesson of last Burri, reinterprets in lyric key, with new chromatic delicacies. Again exercises around a defined module, in an iterative rhythm as in that of prayers.

The blacks of Maria Savino

One day, far away, I saw a mule. It was the first time I saw a mule, it was my first time with a mule but not in the sense of sexual intercourse against nature, if the mule had tried to do that I would have kicked it. If I had tried to do that, thing even more against nature, I would have properly deserved to be kicked by the mule, usage seems to belong to the nature of the mule. I and the mule ignored each other. That meeting wasn’t so important for my artistic education. One da far away, I saw a wall and the things went differently. The wall is polyphonic as Pink Floyd teach us, is polyclinic, as we have learnt to head-butt Chinese Walls when I did Kung-Fu. In reality it says Kong-fo but for the Occidental public Kung-Fu “sounded” more masculine. I have cried on the Wailing Wall, I have made out with a miss on the fence of Alassio, I have been out of tune with the wall of sound, I have gone to pee on the wall of a hotel room because I didn’t find the key card to illuminate the track toward the liberating toilet, I have eluded the wall of indifference that separated myself from recognitions of artistic citizenship, I have thrown a mobile at the wall because ”the customer called by you is not available at the moment”. I hate the walls, I prefer the mules, or the mule of Trieste, but I make exceptions when I run into the walls of Maria Savino, because they are paintings that humiliate the haughtiness of the wall. They are open works, in which the wall houses, generously, key words, without key card. I like the shimmering and at the same time definitive colour of Mutamento. I like the violable grey of Determinazione, I like Passione, Trasformazione. I like Confronto, I like Empatia and its sisters words that I don’t list here because it’s like each one of them were a siren of Di-speranza. Attention: not the sirens that sing to scupper you. These are the sirens that invite to pass any wall, acceding to a place illuminated by humanity, in ambush behind the façade: the first redeeming ambush in art history.

I hate the walls

Flipping through the exhibition catalogue of Spoleto Arte 2012, edited by Vittorio Sgarbi, between the published paintings stand out many works of the artist Maria Savino, dated between 2009 and 2012, concerning just the production of the last triennium; in them the artist moves at ease among informal painting, full of matter, lumps, increases and compositions played on the softness of the sign with marquetries of color, as in the paintings titled Confini 2012, Entropia 2011-12, Luce 2012, made with mixed media technique on table or canvas, in which the painter prefers curvilineal forms inserted each other defining and strengthening reciprocally. Gillo Dorfles, always careful and precise in locating new talents, in commenting some of Savino’s paintings exhibited in Spoleto, affirms: ‘’In her works there is trace of the informal, by her revised and situated in an absolutely personalized dimension (…) Savino’s works allow room for free interpretation that alla long I consider at the basis of every artistic expression and I also pursue in my production”. In this Milan exhibition reappears two significant works of the cycle Stratificazioni 2012, in which the artist inserts down on the painting an element of contrast, the picture of a baby girl or the cover of the volume Holy Bible: from above the dark and frightful matter expands on the most part of the surface, coming down to cover partially the picture and the book placed on bright backgrounds, as if it wants to delete their traces like volcanic magma, but the face of the baby girl that represents the innocence, the purity, the hope is safe like so is spared the holy book that the human knowledge in communion with the Divine. In other compositions, just apparently dominated by the dark, with emblematic titles Di-speranza, the light that breaks the darkness, represented by yellow stripes and blue expanses like bright paths to follow, becomes protagonist; so the dark tones light up, impregnated by an edifying “light”. Sgarbi quoting Juan de la Cruz ( Doctor Mysticus ), in his text on Savino, certainly has remembered the poem Noche oscura and the poetic work Subida del Monte Carmelo, in which the spanish mystic, lived during the age of Reform and Counter-Reformation, describes the soul travel from its corporeal seat toward the union with the Creator. Savino in her artistic path has dealt with serious themes that afflict the contemporary world: the excessive consumerism of our Occidental societies in which, as in a quote of the writer humorist Marcello Marchesi “all isn’t enough anymore”; the environmental safeguard with injuries inflicted on planet Earth by grim economic profits; the decadence of the language and our indifference to deepen the knowledge between people, despite the most innovative and sophisticated communication technologies available nowadays.

Capturing the light

I got to see the early work of Maria Savino a fifteen years ago, hanging on the walls in the hallway of a study professional in Brianza. Two paintings of small dimensions which aroused my curiosity for their material density and chroma on, which reminded me at first certain works of Charles Mattioli linked to the cycle of the Waters death. I then revised his works in several years away, at a party where she had been set up a joint exhibition of the women, artists of different training. An interesting encounter for the freshness of the works, some of which surely still unripe and in reflective phase respect to the research undertaken by their authors. In this context, I had the opportunity to review the paintings of Mary, noting the evolution art done in this time frame. I noticed also the gap between his artistic expression and that of other participants, which prompted me to invite Savino exposure organized at the center “Materima” Casalbeltrame, one shows that the starred along with another painter and a photographer. The event received a special permission from the public and the critics. What I can say now is that every author needs time and of “comrades” ideal to take an informed decision on journey through art. Fellow adventure which can be critics and experts, writers and poets, painters and sculptors, historians, from assimilate as examples and references to the poetry chosen, then “Overcome” through personal style. I am sure that Mary Savino will find the strength, temperament and courage necessary to to complete this process, only to afford to get to know knowing fully their art.

The art of Maria Savino