Between sensuality and spirituality: the heart at peace

The sculptures of Marialuisa Tadei are drawings realised in three dimensions which evoke like Fioretti people and animals in playful situations, profiles, contours and silhouettes which unfold in the air their mood at once existential and celebratory. They are a part of a universe composed of our most vivid, deep and significant dreams.

Unlike graffiti which, scrawled on the walls of streets and bathrooms, is the expression of an anonymous and collective mind, MariaLuisa Tadei means to write with immediacy and spontaneity in the blue sky of our thoughts. The lines of her designs are witness to a lively presence wholly at odds with the weightier abuses of conceptualism and it is this very freshness, this lack of sophistication that generates the unforced naturalness of her work. Its ideal setting would be the shore of an infinite tropical beach where the sky and sea co-mingle. There we should find the horizon of our imagination.

These slender figures are the traces of postures at ease in space; they are pleasing visions from which are wholly absent the stress and strain of our urban lives. They are a breath of fresh air which help us in turn to breathe more freely, their light and playful forms helping us to feel a little more human and generous in our relations with each other: our lives would be more beautiful if we could live like this a little longer. MariaLuisa Tadei’s visual imagination brings to mind pure feelings and the simple but profound pleasures of every day: it is a discourse far from the screams of violence, one which speaks quietly of friendship and serenity. “Luxury, tranquillity and delight”, said Matisse, words which bring all his values into our chaotic modern world. The artist’s great merit is that which makes us understand that peace for our hearts can be found in the balance between spirituality and sensuality.

Milan, April 22, 1996