Mario Fabbrini

“A life wrapped from the lights and the colors of the art”

Mario Fabbrini at the easel

Decidedly it is not easy to speak about the art of my father-in-law. It always remains the suspicion of a lack of objectivity, or the risk to indulge in considerations too much generous and not true. For this reason I am feeling a certain embarrassment. Nevertheless, when I think about Mario Fabbrini, about his way of painting, to the concentration with which he studied the chromatic range of his palette, to his sudden outbursts of anger when the pictorial result was not equal to his waits, I can’t help being astonished in the face of the strong contribution that his art, wrapped of lights and colors, has left to our reflections.

And it is for this, that on the electronic sheet of dictamundi, I don’t want to write about him, but I wish that they are the voices of critics more authoritative than me to express the judgments on his painting.	Flowers - Oil on canvas 40 x 50 (Coll private)

And it is for this, that on the electronic sheet of dictamundi, I don’t want to write about him, but I wish that they are the voices of critics more authoritative than me to express the judgments on his painting.

Flowers - Oil on canvas 40 x 50 (Coll private)

Sitll life with a bottle - oil on canvasa 50x60 (Coll. private)	Here, I want only to remember the long hours that we have passed together in the rooms of the Pitti or of the Louvre dwelling over Fattori and Pisarro, the painters he loved more than others and that more than others have leaved a mark on his poetic.

Sitll life with a bottle - oil on canvasa 50x60 (Coll. private)

Here, I want only to remember the long hours that we have passed together in the rooms of the Pitti or of the Louvre dwelling over Fattori and Pisarro, the painters he loved more than others and that more than others have leaved a mark on his poetic.

Still life witn a bottle (detail)	“What a pity!, that Fattori, like all the painters of Leghorn, abounded of earth colors” concluded every time shaking his head. And what a pity!, I add, that we had no time to visit the remarkable legacy of the Pisarro family exposed at the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford.

Still life witn a bottle (detail)

“What a pity!, that Fattori, like all the painters of Leghorn, abounded of earth colors” concluded every time shaking his head. And what a pity!, I add, that we had no time to visit the remarkable legacy of the Pisarro family exposed at the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford.

One day of the month of August 2006, with the yellow of the high sun shining on the mounts of the Calvana, he grabbed his palette, easel and paint-brushes, and has gone in hush, as it were his habit to introduce himself, only leaving the regret and the memory of his splendid paintings	Still life with onions - Oil on canvas 50X70 (Coll. private)

The bare tree - Oil on canvasa 18x23 (Coll. private)	Critical comments *“… his is a post-macchiaiola painting in which the stroke of the brush is well melted and where the palette can express all moments of suggestion and also of poetry…”* Giovanni Arcidiacono - Presentation in catalogue for the personal exhibition at the Gallery Cancelli of Florence 1971 “… to the wide tonal spaces, he prefers the feelings of particular colors; everyone with own vibration and in the entirety they form a rhythm able to provoke the joy of true poetic moments…” Michelangelo Mazzeo - Cinema ed Arte - Turin 1972

The bare tree - Oil on canvasa 18x23 (Coll. private)

Critical comments

“… his is a post-macchiaiola painting in which the stroke of the brush is well melted and where the palette can express all moments of suggestion and also of poetry…”

Giovanni Arcidiacono - Presentation in catalogue for the personal exhibition at the Gallery Cancelli of Florence 1971

“… to the wide tonal spaces, he prefers the feelings of particular colors; everyone with own vibration and in the entirety they form a rhythm able to provoke the joy of true poetic moments…”

Michelangelo Mazzeo - Cinema ed Arte - Turin 1972

The battle - Oil on canvas 70X100 (Coll. Private))	“… he observes and firms on the canvas the flowers with renewed emotion; painted spontaneously with nervous and sure blows of paint-brush, backlighting in the open air and in the soft light of the inners communicating the spell of the nature…” Adalberto Rossi - Presentation in catalogue for the personal exhibition at the Gallery La Rocca in Torino 1972

The battle - Oil on canvas 70X100 (Coll. Private))

“… he observes and firms on the canvas the flowers with renewed emotion; painted spontaneously with nervous and sure blows of paint-brush, backlighting in the open air and in the soft light of the inners communicating the spell of the nature…”

Adalberto Rossi - Presentation in catalogue for the personal exhibition at the Gallery La Rocca in Torino 1972

“… Fabbrini prefers the pictures where, with the expressive touch, there is more constructive consistency, that is that happy encounter with the truth of the things. And here the hovels, the little villages, the countries, crowned from hills inlaid of green, embraced from curtains of olive-trees, hedges, tufts, just come out from one eruptive source…” Giuseppe Billi - Presentation in catalogue for the personal exhibition at the Oratory of S. Ambrogio in Prato 1995 “… a sincere and poetic language never opened to “oddness” just because his search was all addressed to stop on the canvas now a sunset, now an atmosphere…” Franco Ricconomi – La Nazione (Florence) August 2006	The old olive -Oil on canvas60x80 (Coll. private)

“… Fabbrini prefers the pictures where, with the expressive touch, there is more constructive consistency, that is that happy encounter with the truth of the things. And here the hovels, the little villages, the countries, crowned from hills inlaid of green, embraced from curtains of olive-trees, hedges, tufts, just come out from one eruptive source…”

Giuseppe Billi - Presentation in catalogue for the personal exhibition at the Oratory of S. Ambrogio in Prato 1995

“… a sincere and poetic language never opened to “oddness” just because his search was all addressed to stop on the canvas now a sunset, now an atmosphere…”

Franco Ricconomi – La Nazione (Florence) August 2006

The old olive -Oil on canvas60x80 (Coll. private)

Mario Fabbrini (Fabor) thematic video of the exhibition at the following links on youtube:
First Part: https://youtu.be/nYy0z63x6Wo
Second Part: https://youtu.be/u5WSdENQT8U

To read and download the thematic catalog of the exhibition in pdf format click here

The Municipality of Vaiano (Prato) is organizing the painting exhibition "The colors of the earth and the soul. Homage to Mario Fabbrini" curated by the CDSE Foundation. The anthology dedicated to the painter of Vaiano (1926 - 2006) includes dozens of paintings, divided into sections (the landscape, the seascapes, the figures, the still lifes, the trees and the meaning of life, the floral compositions, after the illness) , which belonged to the heirs and to the families of the area. The exhibition will be open from 23 June to 9 July 2017 in the Council Hall of the Municipality of Vaiano.