For Maria Lai a retrospective in Ulassai, her hometown, on the centenary of her birth

The Stazione dell’Arte Foundation, in collaboration with the Maria Lai Archive and the support of the Municipality of Ulassai, the Autonomous Region of Sardinia and the Fondazione di Sardegna, is hosting the exhibition Maria Lai. Daily Bread scheduled from April 25 to June 9, 2019 in the spaces, completely renovated for the occasion, of the Art Station in Ulassai (Nuoro).

The exhibition, curated by Davide Mariani, is part of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Maria Lai (Ulassai, 1919 - Cardedu, 2013) and aims to retrace the most significant moments of her production related to the theme of bread-making, both from a material point of view and from a more symbolic and allusive one, that is, as a metaphor for art and life.

Bread making constitutes a continuous suggestion for the artist and has been present throughout her creative journey since her beginnings: “My first academy I attended with the women who made bread in my house. It was beautiful,” Maria Lai declared, thinking back to those moments of sharing intangible knowledge that would so mark her poetics in the years to follow. Indeed, these gestures would turn into mythical visions characterized by a profound rituality and a strong sense of mystery: “each portion of dough is transformed in an unpredictable way as if following its own internal law of matter. This making of itself has been the great fascination of bread.”

The exhibition, through the display of more than thirty works, many of them previously unpublished, thus aims to provide, for the first time, a broad cross-section of the artist’s imagery referring to bread, starting with his first drawings, made as early as the mid-1940s and later exhibited in his first solo show in Rome at the Galleria dell ’ Obelisco (1957), moving on to the extraordinary results presented in 1977 at the Galleria del Brandale in Savona in the exhibition I pani di Maria Lai, curated by Mirella Bentivoglio, and then to the public art works and installations of the 1990s and 2000s, such as La strada del rito, an environmental intervention made in 1992 in Ulassai on the theme of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the’installation of a series of Ceramic Loaves (1999) in an old disused oven in Castelnuovo di Farfa, and Invitation to the Table (2004), a work made for the Pitti Immagine Casa exhibition in Florence in which loaves and books in terracotta are arranged on a sumptuous table, as if to suggest that “every work of art must become bread to be offered to a common table.”

Providing an ideal frame of reference for the works on display are then a series of shots taken by a number of photographers who were close, in various ways, to the artist, such as his nephew Virgilio Lai, whose commitment as a photojournalist is evidenced by afascinating production on the subject, Paola Pusceddu, who precisely at Maria Lai’s home produced a service featuring, among others, the women of Ulassai shaping the festive bread, and Marianne Sin-Pfältzer, her friend and tireless follower, who, having arrived in Sardinia in the mid-1950s, was able to document with rare sensitivity the daily dimension of artisanal work on the island.

Closing the exhibition is the projection of a video, made by multimedia director Francesco Casu, which shows Maria Lai intent on reading Cuore mio by Salvatore Cambosu(Miele Amaro, Vallecchi editore, Florence, 1954). The story features Maria Pietra, a bread artisan, who agrees to turn herself into stone to snatch her child from death. Cambosu’s tale, which will be taken up on several occasions by the artist in the execution of some of her most significant works, such as the patinated and glazed terracotta sculpture Maria Pietra (1993, Stazione dell’Arte collection), lends itself well to restoring the reflection on art that Maria Lai clarifies in La pietra e la paura(Arte Duchamp, Cagliari, 2006). Here the artist, through a dialogue with Federica Di Castro, traces the metaphorical images suggested by the narrative that see Maria Pietra represent the artist, “fear” is creativity, “stone” is art, “the child” is the malaise of the world and “the animals of the forest” are the games for children and the works of art for adults.

The exhibition adds a new thematic piece to the knowledge of Maria Lai’s work and expands the exhibition offerings of the Art Station, which recently rearranged the rooms of the museum’s main body thanks to an unprecedented exhibition itinerary from the permanent collection, titled Sguardo Opera Pensiero (Look, Work, Thought), whose intent is to provide keys to interpreting and understanding contemporary aesthetic experience.

For all information you can call +39 0782 787055, send an email to info@stazionedellarte.it or visit the official website of the Art Station.

Source: press release

For Maria Lai a retrospective in Ulassai, her hometown, on the centenary of her birth

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