Mario Lupo - Untitled

In this work we observe two of the central themes of Mario Lupo's poetics, the woman who waits and the seagulls. To better understand their meaning, we can refer directly to the artist's own words: "...as I progressed in my research, a particular character emerged, that is, the woman, the woman who waits crouched on the beach, full of hope, who waits not only spiritually..., physically perhaps for the return of her husband, her brother, a loved one, and spiritually for something good that is to come. Perhaps in a broader sense, we are all waiting for something better, and so this theme, so profound and so interesting for me, has become emblematic and therefore has become recurrent in all my paintings (Teleregione interview 1989). In the same interview, he also speaks of the meaning of seagulls: ... then the seagull appeared. The seagull is also the friend of hours of solitude, because I have been at sea, I have sailed for several years, and therefore perhaps I have understood more about the solitude of man and the waiting of woman. And the seagull, just as it kept me company during the hours of sailing, now pictorially keeps company with this woman who is in waiting….(Mario Lupo - Teleregione interview 1989)

“ I also tried other techniques, like etching, for example. But for me it was a very unique and beautiful experience. I bought the presses to print directly. They asked me what an etching was, what a drypoint was, and I didn't know the answer, I must say, because I had never approached the world of graphic design. So, little by little, I wanted to learn. With the help of other printers, I also worked on etching and silkscreen. And as I always did with painting, I tried to put in as much effort as possible. My son Riccardo, now driven by the same passion for graphic design, has opened his own printing shop and creates magnificent etchings for me and other artists.” This is how Mario Lupo describes his approach to the graphic arts. This work is truly characteristic of the author's style, combining the woman waiting in the foreground with the seagulls gliding over the sea. The style is two-dimensional and drawn, we could count it among the naive paintings that distance themselves from a more academic and realistic culture, but the choice of this type of representation is intrinsic and necessary to express the artist's poetics.

Mario Lupo was born in 1926 in Giulianova, in the province of Teramo. As a young man, he moved several times with his family of five siblings, first to Gorizia, then to Pescara, and finally returning to Giulianova after the war. He decided to enlist in the Maritime Finance Police, and at the same time began painting in his spare time, starting with master copies of 19th-century works and later moving on to painting flowers and country houses. For work, he moved to Ancona, where he began to meet various painters, including Fanesi, who encouraged him to pursue his art. It was during this period that he exhibited in his first solo shows in Rome, Milan, San Benedetto del Tronto, and Siena. Perhaps also due to his passion for sailing, he began painting on canvas, a rough canvas used in sailing. He began to develop his own style, primarily depicting seascapes, hillside landscapes, black-and-whites, and religious subjects. In 1964, he painted his first "Woman in Waiting," a subject that would become a constant in his art. A few years later, seagulls also appeared, and the two often began to appear side by side. The artist died in 1992.

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