It opens at Palazzo Merulana (Rome) the exhibition "ROBERTA MELDINI - plastic linearity and sinuous three-dimensionality", a retrospective dedicated to the artist Roberta Meldini (Rimini, 1930 - Rome, 2011), sculptress and designer, a prominent protagonist in the artistic panorama of the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition, scheduled until 5 March 2021, is curated by Brigida Mascitti and is organized by the "Roberta Meldini Cultural Association for Contemporary Art" with the patronage of the Municipality of Rome and the Lazio Region. On display is a selection of over 50 works – 16 of bronze, concrete and terracotta sculptures and 36 of paintings, engraving graphics and continuous line drawings – representative of the artistic production which, starting from the early 70s, reaches the end of the 90s of the twentieth century, although the artist's complete oeuvre covered the chronological span of five decades, from the 50s to the early 2000s. The sculpted and painted subjects, all of a figurative nature, focus on three of his favorite themes by the artist. The women, sinuous monolithic figures depicted isolated, in the most disparate poses – lying down, sitting, standing – or in uncontaminated naturalistic contexts with a fairy-tale character; the portraits of people close to the artist or unknown characters, belonging to the most disparate social classes; finally the animals, a “humanized and typified” subject, very dear to Roberta Meldini: i her bronzes, such as the Chant Clair, the Peacock, the Turtle, the Chameleon and the dying Cormorant, are as eloquent and independent as are the animals that live in the uncontaminated nature in which Meldini sets her graphic, engraving and line production continues.
The souls of the artist, as underlined by the curator Brigida Mascitti, are present in the exhibition through the common denominator of the "praise of life", in any form of expression - human, animal and natural therefore - and through the peculiar stylistic signature of Roberta Meldini, in his constant search for an original and distinct sign, but at the same time mindful of the national - Giacomo Manzù, Marino Marini, Emilio Greco, Venanzo Crocetti - and international - figurative sculpture production of the early twentieth century.
“Meldini's works, whether sculptural or painted, engraved or drawn in continuous line, all show the same plastic solemnity, the expressive power of gesture, thought, feeling, the living sinuosity of the flesh – writes the curator in the text in catalog published by Palombi Editore - are surprisingly human and vital figures, mindful of the great tradition of classical and twentieth-century sculpture but always reinterpreted in the light of a very personal stylistic code that makes them unique in their kind and timeless". A pupil of the greats of the twentieth-century figurative tradition, Roberta Meldini infuses her artistic production with traces of the archaic and the ancient, the fifteenth century and the Renaissance, the innovation of Auguste Rodin and the expressionism of Medardo Rosso, constantly reinterpreting them in the light of contemporaneity and innovation. His works are timeless because, as Adolfo Wildt wrote, "art, like life, is neither forward nor backward [...] it is not instinct, but exercise, a way of declining a language that has eternal laws" ( The art of marble, 1921).
But if "a critical discourse on the work of Roberta Meldini cannot disregard the graphic exercise, in particular drawing, which accompanies the sculpture and integrates its meanings" - noted Carlo Fabrizio Carli in the last exhibition catalog "Roberta Meldini, l 'abstraction of reality" (2008) - and if it is substantially impossible for the activity of a true sculptor to be carried out without the aid of drawing, in hindsight, through the full-bodied nucleus of graphic works exhibited in the exhibition, in our "artist in the round” the study aimed at sculpture reaches heights of autonomy and unrivaled lyricism.
Biography – From her hometown, the artist moved to Rome at a very young age, where she graduated from the Art School and Academy of Fine Arts. During her studies, she was a pupil of Michele Guerrisi, Domenico Purificato and Giuseppe Capogrossi. Later she perfected the working of marble in the studio of the sculptor Giovanni Ardini and deepened the technique of the chisel with Lorenzo Guerrini.
From the early fifties to 2008 he exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and for over thirty years he taught Plastic Disciplines at Artistic High Schools and Art Institutes in Rome. His sculptures, drawings, oils, engravings and embossed branches are present in public and private collections, both in Italy and abroad.
Works present in public collections – Sculptures of Sacred Art by Roberta Meldini are present in Italian and foreign places of worship and at the Diocesan Museum of Caltanissetta. Graphic works by her are conserved at: Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art, Pescara; Civic Collection of Bertarelli Prints, Milan; Collection of Adalberto Sartori Prints, Mantua; Department of Ancient and Modern Prints, Bagnacavallo. Documentation of her artistic activity is present in the Historical Archive of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome.
