By Roberta Giaconi
“I don’t want to add anything, you just have to see” said Maria Mulas at the opening, on 15th February at the Italian Cultural Institute, of her photographic exhibition Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup.The city and its people. Pierluigi Barrotta, Director of the Institute, had just said that he was very honoured to host the exhibition and Rossana Pittelli and Giorgio Bonomi, who curated it, had spoken about the particular style of Maria Mulas, about the expressiveness of her photographical portraits, about her works vibrant with movement and life. Afterwards Maria addressed the crowd of visitors inviting them just to have a look. She was excited and looked eccentric wearing a violet dress; her face was framed by bright-red hair and big earrings and an enormous circular pendant imposed itself upon her tiny body.
In her photographs shapes and colours weave together in a parallel study. On the one hand there are the portraits which have made her famous; on the other hand there is a very particular study, freer and imaginative, which reveals the artist’s love for architectural elements and for continuous changes of perspective. “Maria doesn’t use tripods for her camera, but wanders around the objects she wants to capture” Bonomi explained. In her pictures she has portrayed the aisles and stairs of the London subway, she has caught a girl’s face in a Venetian shop window, she has captured the light which filters through a closed shutter; yet, she has photographed the geometrical interlacement of the architectural elements, giving life to actual works of art. “The most impressive thing is that Maria succeeds in capturing these images just following her artistic sense, using only an old 35mm camera, banning thus the digital era” Bonomi continued. Even the pavement of a Ravenna’s street becomes an element worthy of admiration with her, its intense colours combined with the geometric plainness of the road layout.
Furthermore, the desire to catch the essence of things, to capture their real shapes, is typical of Maria Mulas. “Photographing is a way of telling without being interrupted” Lea Vergine, a friend of hers, used to say. The portraits chiefly, give the strong impression of containing the personality of the people photographed. There is Borges with his eyes closed and his face slightly turned up, there is Paloma Picasso who looks vaguely at the camera, there is Ionesco who leans out of an armchair with a faint smile...
On the wall of the ground-floor hall of the Italian Cultural Institute, before going upstairs where the exhibition continues, the black and white faces attract the visitors’ attention. Here, in a big panel, Maria Mulas’s portraits seem to have been imprisoned and have preserved the characters and attitudes of the photographed people. “I remember once in Ravenna. It was hot and Maria Mulas was there with her camera – Bonomi told me – and whenever she took a picture she asked a question. She wanted to know everything about the people she was photographing: what job they were doing, if they were married, if they were happy or if they felt alone. Afterwards in the pictures their feelings were visible in the expression on their faces”.
This is the art of Maria Mulas, exhibited until 16th March at the Italian Cultural Institute of London.
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