Martino Fiorattini

Between melons and mosquitoes

Opening: Wednesday May 11, 2016, from 6:30 pm
May 12 – July 1, 2016

During the opening art historian Bianca Tosatti will introduce to the exhibition

Martino Fiorattini. Between melons and mosquitoes” is made up of more than twenty art pieces with thick and bright colours portraying fields, wild animals, farmsteads and portraits. Fiorattini is a farmer in Casteldidone, Cremona. He cultivates melons until the age of 50, when he suddenly starts to reduce his work in the fields and picks up the brush with a lot of passion. He first discovers Ligabue, then Picasso and, who knows how, Van Gogh, the fauve movement and the Die Brüke painters: all of those contribute to the explosion of that magical world with colours and forms that have been inside of him till that moment. He is referred to as visionario padano” (visionary of the Po valley) due to his thick brushwork and its dazzling colours used to paint the environment, that small slice of land animated by animals and plants. The big river (the Po) often makes an appearance on his canvas, with its canals winding through fields and villages and the animals transformed by Martino in majestic yet familiar creatures: the nocturnal lynx, the horse, dogs, roosters and chickens but also moths, mosquitoes, flies and more flying insects. His paintings hold secrets, mysterious details telling imaginary and wild tales. Discovered nearly twenty years after his death thanks to an intuition by Bruno Arcari, artist and framer from Casalmaggiore, and after an exhibition held at the Diotti museum in Casalmaggiore, organised by art historian Bianca Tosatti, which launched him into the world of irregular art, Martino Fiorattini is an authentic revelation, set to land for the first time in Milan at the Maroncelli 12 gallery.