Mario Mafai Exhibition at Museo Novecento in Florence

An exhibition at Museo Novecento in Florence highlights Mario Mafai (1902–1965), a key artist in the Alberto Della Ragione Collection, through a collaboration with the University of Florence's SAGAS Department. Mafai, a painter-poet with European breadth, was forced to leave Rome due to fascist racial laws and found refuge in Genoa with collector Alberto Della Ragione, who boosted his career. His work blends expressionism, surrealism, and a melancholic Mediterranean sensibility, often depicting peripheral urban scenes, dreamlike atmospheres, and humble subjects. Paintings like 'Roma dal Gianicolo' (1937) and his 'Fantasie' series from the late 1930s use vivid colors to convey ethical concerns and presage wartime tragedies. Mafai's art reflects an alternative portrait of 20th-century Italian society, rooted in humanism and poetic metaphor.