Mario Lupo - Untitled

In this work we observe two of the central themes of Mario Lupo's poetics, the woman who waits and the seagulls. To better understand their meaning, we can refer directly to the artist's own words: "...as I continued my research, a particular character emerged, that is, the woman, the woman who waits, crouched on the beach, full of hope, who waits not only spiritually... physically, perhaps for the return of her husband, her brother, a loved one, and spiritually for something good to come. Perhaps, in a broader sense, we are all waiting for something better, and so this theme, so profound and so interesting to me, has become emblematic and thus has become a recurring theme in all my paintings" (Teleregione interview 1989). In the same interview, he also speaks of the meaning of seagulls: "...then the seagull appeared. The seagull is also the friend of hours of solitude, because I have been at sea, I have sailed for several years, and so perhaps I have understood more deeply the solitude of man and the waiting of woman. And the seagull, just as it kept me company during the hours of sailing, now pictorially keeps this waiting woman company."

In this specific case we are faced with three women waiting on the seashore, as usual with their heads lowered and their faces hidden under a veil, which gives a certain mysterious aura to the depiction.

The style of the painting is very essential. The expectant women are in the foreground. Lupo's style is recognizable in his love of drawing; the figures are clearly drawn, as if someone had subsequently colored them. The artist does not use shadows and lights to create depth in the painting, but rather opts for a two-dimensional representation where the idea of ​​distance is conveyed exclusively by the allusion to the sea, leading us to imagine the horizon as a spatial element.

Mario Lupo was born in 1926 in Giulianova, in the province of Teramo. As a young man, he moved several times with his family of five siblings, first to Gorizia, then to Pescara, and finally returning to Giulianova after the war. He decided to enlist in the Maritime Finance Police, and at the same time began painting in his spare time, starting with master copies of 19th-century works and later moving on to painting flowers and country houses. For work, he moved to Ancona, where he began to meet various painters, including Fanesi, who encouraged him to pursue his art. It was during this period that he exhibited in his first solo shows in Rome, Milan, San Benedetto del Tronto, and Siena. Perhaps also due to his passion for sailing, he began painting on canvas, a rough canvas used in sailing. He began to develop his own style, primarily depicting seascapes, hillside landscapes, black-and-whites, and religious subjects. In 1964, he painted his first "Woman in Waiting," a subject that would become a constant in his art. A few years later, seagulls also appeared, and the two often began to appear side by side. The artist died in 1992.

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