The Eduardo Secci Gallery is pleased to inaugurate Saturday, May 8th (4:00pm) a retrospective of Titina Maselli (1924-2005), one of the most representative figures of the Twentieth Century Italian art. The exhibition, curated by Alberto Fiz, launches a gallery program dedicated for the first time to an historical and critical review of the 1900s. It coincides with the project titled “Étoile. Titina Maselli, Salvatore Ferragamo and the myth of Greta Garbo” at the Museo Novecento in Florence.

The show analyzes the career of the famous artist from the first creations of the 1940s to the most recent works of the early 2000s. It is examined through a selection of thirteen works that summarize the extensive research of Titina Maselli, a unique personality of the Italian scene, who was able to independently explore the archetypes of modernity. As Alberto Fiz highlights, “although starting from the lesson of the historical avant-garde, in particular from futurism, the modernity of the Roman artist lies in her ability to investigate the dynamic flux that crosses things, creating an energy field in perpetual transformation”.

Works of the 1940s introduce to the exhibition revealing the evident relationship with the Roman School, the specific attention to everyday objects, Macchina da scrivere (1947, Typewriter), and the domestic environment, Pianoforte con ragazzo (Citto) (1936, Piano with boy(Citto)). The first room of the gallery is completed by Albero della notte (Tree of the Night), a particularly emblematic work of 1955 that seems to presage the disappearance of nature as an independent topic.

Welcoming the visitor to the second room is Calciatore Verde (195s, Green Player), whose composition prefigures the subsequent investigation into the relation between body and space, which Titina Maselli undertakes during her stay in New York. It is not by chance that in those years the artist explains “a living picture with the stadium around the footballer or, rather, the skyscraper around the boxer”. Here we find – brought together – three paintings of great expressive power: Calciatori in Corsa (2002, Running Footballers), Calciatore Rosso (1970’, Red Footballer), Boxeurs (2003, Boxers).

The third room of the exhibition culminates with the presence of a work, Elevated grattacielo / Calciatore ferito (1984, Elevated skyscraper / injured footballer), a four meters long diptych that constitutes a further linguistic turning point determined by the attention to atmospheric themes, where the soccer figure develops a synergy with the urban landscape in a continuous becoming that seems to change in relation to our gaze.

Dynamism, action, bodies and interferences around the urban landscape, are some of the aspects that characterize the path of Titina Maselli forcing the viewer to wonder about a process that was capable of capturing modernity in its mutability and precariousness.