The Poetry and Philosophy of Marco S. Mallamaci's Art (Zhang Runshi)

The Italian painter Marco, although a wanderer, he has the qualities of a virtuous hermit. He enjoys living in different countries and cities, discovering the spark of life in cultural differences.

In 1999, Marco, who had lived in Europe, North and South America, as well as in Africa, came to Beijing.

The difference between Marco and a fellow Italian who came to China during the Qing dynasty, Giuseppe Castiglione, is that even though he enjoys living in China, his creations are not directly affected by this country.

Marco is unique. Many times he is like a poet, using paint to search for some kind of spirit in his creations. His profound topics, his broad vision and his abundant imagination enchant the viewer causing him to consider things differently and deeply.

People often think of traditional Chinese painting as a pastime of the educated; likewise they consider post Renaissance oil painting to be the entirety of European artistic traditions. This is far from the truth. In China, a rich and abundant tradition of popular art has been continuously acting as an impetus for new creation.

In Europe, symbolism, basically a tool of literature, is used widely in painting, crafts and book illustration. Allusion, fundamentally a tool of poetry, almost disappears from realistic European painting tradition, but it is retained as an echo in decoration.

Marco's works clearly reflect these precious European literary traditions. He has left behind the mere copying of objects, and in a drunken fantasy, he uses his paint brush to examine and come in contact with the place in which the soul of life itself resides, yet still expressing himself with simple and individualized strokes and colors.

Sometimes it is a sudden change in emotion that can bring the artist's brush to the canvas, singular and inspiring. Under his brush, the "Ballerina" - which in the composition is even with the horizon, her arms like branches in the sunlight of the morning - is beautiful, fresh and lively in silence. "Dream of a Youth Gone Away" and "Minette" sketch the shadowy emotion of a dream. "Latin America: The General U$ed" is worthy of being called a masterpiece: with a clever use of design and a rich imagination, the painter combines the dictator and the land he has devastated into the same entity.

Marco has a number of admirers in Beijing, who have fallen in love with his ideas and his expression of those ideas. He seems to live a very simple and quite life in Beijing, but his creations are always lively, able to move the hearts of viewers, because he knows that art can and must reach into the deepest parts of the heart of man.

This article, written by Chinese painter Mr. Zhang Runshi, edited on the magazine "Chinese Art", Edition 41, dated 15 Oct 2005, has been translated by Mr. Joshua Dominick.

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