Il Matteucci Center for Modern Art, continuing the critical-recognitive investigation on the important personalities of the Italian twentieth century, sanctioned with the recent exhibition of the Roman Secession, proposes a refined monograph dedicated to Ruggero Alfredo Michahelles (RAM), centered on a precious nucleus of works referring to his metaphysical experience , most of which have not been seen since the presentation, in 1936, at the Gallery "Le Niveau" in Paris.
Ruggero Alfredo Michahelles (1898-1976), aka RAM, is mainly known as the protagonist of the Tuscan futurism, as well as an interpreter, together with his older brother Thayaht, of the great avant-gardes of the time. However, his singular and polymorphic personality hides another face that is no less vivid and suggestive than the one that counts him among the supporters of the movement founded by Marinetti, of whom he was a friend: that of a metaphysical painter, interpreter of silence, with open to the imaginary and to a world of empty and unreal spaces. Although his vision of a firm and immutable everyday life expresses the sensations of a lost and unexpected time, in reality it reveals a great sensitivity and inner serenity, the ideal condition for an inspiration based on the search for a beauty which, despite the evident reference to classical forms, it does not hide the tensions of modern times.
Coming from a well-to-do cosmopolitan family, who settled in Florence from the mid-nineteenth century, Ram grew up in an up-to-date and international environment, making his debut at a very young age as an illustrator and then perfecting himself in scenography, as attested by the prize awarded to him in 1924 for the staging of Aida, made together with Thayaht. His refined aesthetic sense, as well as from life, also draws from fashion and industry, through a progressive visual settling in the structure of image and light. Add to this the admiration for the soft and sensual line of the authors of the Florentine seventeenth century, admired at the great exhibition of 1922, of which ample evidence is gathered in Composition of nudes, of a few years later.
The "neo-metaphysical" experience completed starting from 1930, represents a real turning point in RAM's pictorial research, matured during the course of repeated stays in Paris. The artist appears very close to the “Italiens de Paris” – especially a Magnelli, Tozzi, Paresce e by Chirico – with whom it shares many aspects of visual research. In Paris, in the "Le Niveau" gallery, he held a memorable one-man show in 1936 on the occasion of which de Chirico wrote: "If the artist's intention is to create beautiful things, Micaelles achieves this through canvases that can enlarge walls, embellish rooms and, without forgetting the greatest test: he knows how to give us works with which we would like to live”.
The paintings presented at the Matteucci Center for Modern Art, largely selected from those proposed or executed in the same period of time, fully express the range of poetic-expressive predilections of the artist: there is the theme of the island without shadows (L'île sans ombres) which seems to overturn, updating it with references to the beloved architectural rationalism, the Boecklinian meaning of The Isle of the Dead, and building in its place an edenic island of the living. The same tension appears in the figure/architecture/light relationship in Gli sposi, set on the dazzling beach of Viareggio. In other works, such as in Les mannequins without a face on the seashore, the tone becomes subtly intriguing and enigmatic, to the point of touching the restlessness in Cataclysme or in Bouquet prehistorique. In this kind of representations, the evocation of ruins, full of romantic hints, is tinged with a visionary reference to the landscape of the Tertiary era - as in Savinio - but also with the imagination of a hypothetical future in the absence of man, now deposed from the leading role.
The Viareggio exhibition also gives the measure of RAM's fertile vein also as a sculptor. In addition to works such as Mother Nature and The Builder, the famous Quadriga stands out, defined by Marinetti “powerful engine horsepower”. Made by RAM in 1929 for the competition organized by Metro Goldwyn Meyer on the occasion of the film launch of the first version of "Ben Hur", it imposed the artist's name at the 1932 Venice Biennale.
