Vortex

The long artistic career of Monfardini, which allowed him to participate in a Venice Biennale, is rooted in the visual experience of the Po Valley and the Lombardy landscape, which he depicted countless times, especially later in life, in increasingly conventional ways. The work we admire here, however, belongs to his youth, a time when the painter took part, with a special sensitivity, to the Symbolist movement, which in those years was in part merging with the important avant-garde experience of Futurism. This picture, of which many copies were made which are kept elsewhere, shows a tangle of bodies and souls capable of composing a luminous vortex, in which every existence is inextricably intertwined with the others. It is said that Umberto Boccioni praised this composition. It is in fact comparable to some works by Boccioni, in particular to the fundamental cycle called Stati d’Animo. The lively creativity of Monfardini, which he expressed also as a sculptor, and in numerous works created in the course of the 20th century, must be celebrated. He was a sincere painter, who always tried to translate the impressions of his soul onto the canvas. He often achieved very significant results, such as the representation of an abyssal universe whose ultimate goals remain unknown to man.