{"id":306,"date":"2026-05-20T01:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T23:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/?post_type=news_intervista&p=306"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:00:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T23:00:40","slug":"il-ritorno-dellartista-migratore-madaudo-si-ispira-a-beato-angelico","status":"publish","type":"news_intervista","link":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/news\/il-ritorno-dellartista-migratore-madaudo-si-ispira-a-beato-angelico\/","title":{"rendered":"The Return of the Migratory Artist: Madaudo Draws Inspiration from Fra Angelico"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The painter, having returned to Sicily after his successes abroad, chose to abandon his activity as an illustrator and devote himself entirely to an art that is \u201csublime and ethereal.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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PALERMO. (lcb) \u201cPainting is the transfiguration of dreams. It is giving form to the expansions of the unconscious, sublime matter for painting.\u201d Thus Beppe Madaudo, who from today until November 29 exhibits his panels at the Galleria Arte al Borgo, describes the art of painting. A \u201csublime and ethereal art,\u201d yet one made of matter: rabbit-skin glue and Bologna plaster, gold and oil, wood and palette-knife strokes. These are the tools with which the new \u201cBlessed\u201d artist gives shape and life to his paintings.<\/p>\r\n

An ancient technique through which the restless painting of this \u201cmigratory artist, traveller of the spirit\u201d comes to life upon wooden panels \u2014 an artist who, after twenty-five years, seems finally to have stopped in order to rediscover, in Palermo, the colours of a land that secretly calls back to itself its children scattered across the world. He returned to the island together with his daughters and his wife Licia, herself an artist, whom he met at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and who later became his wife and the mother of Barbara and Vanessa, as well as \u2014 Madaudo says \u2014 \u201cthe most severe and authoritative critic of my work.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Portraitist, draftsman, and fashionable illustrator, Madaudo definitively chose in 1986 to devote himself exclusively to painting, and is among the eighty-seven painters included in the virtual gallery 20th Century Artists<\/em>, dedicated to the most important artists of the century. His works are held in the collections of the Amsa Gallery in Hamburg and the Yoko Civilization Institute in Takayama, Japan. His career has been marked by fortunate encounters: with Hugo Pratt and Crepax alongside the four children of the creator of Corto Maltese<\/em>; with Franco Maria Ricci who, like a patron, placed a wing of his villa in Parma at Madaudo\u2019s disposal so that he could work on the engravings for Casanova\u2019s Histoire de ma vie<\/em>. Yet at night, painting took the place of illustration\u2026<\/p>\r\n

\u201cI began working in illustration,\u201d Madaudo recalls, \u201cwhile looking at the Sistine Chapel, with those drawings that are like a comic strip ante litteram<\/em>. There I understood that comics possessed great potential, and I made a book with Garzanti telling stories of the Native Americans. Then I continued with other publishers, illustrating comics drawn from history, literature, and theatre.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

In 1976 he won the award for best Italian illustrator. He worked with numerous publications, among them Giornale di Sicilia<\/em>, for which he created three hundred illustrations for La Porta del Sole<\/em>. This was in fact his final work as an illustrator. What prompted him to choose painting?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cIn 1986 Olivetti gave me the opportunity to create pictorial panels rather than simple illustrations for a book, and purchased twelve of my paintings for its important collection. From then on I decided: always painting, and no to those who ask me for drawings. Illustration brought me money and success, while denying me the absolute freedom to express myself. Painting is profoundly different from illustration, which has limits imposed by the publisher. Painting means giving form to the oneiric world, to imagination detached from reality. That is its visionary side, but then there is technique, which is nothing other than the means of rendering visible the very idea of the painting. Colour is a note that can be expressed together with, or in opposition to, other notes. A painting is a set of lines traced according to an order, and colours become the complement of these lines, functioning in harmony according to a certain scheme.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Are colours also in harmony with the mood of the painter?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cNo, because the painting realizes and paints itself. It is autonomous. I pursue a precise idea, which is already fully formed within me. I give it body while knowing perfectly well what I am going to create.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

His paintings are executed on wooden panels soaked in rabbit-skin glue and Bologna plaster and covered with thin sheets of gold leaf in the manner of Fra Angelico. Why did he return to this technique?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cTo resort to such ancient techniques is nothing other than the conviction that art is born from the art that preceded it. There is an indissoluble bond from the beginning up to our own time.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

And what is the new, according to Madaudo?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cIt is what one manages to create on the basis of the ancient, of what has already been done and already seen. It is a way of moving forward while striving toward perfection, trying to render one\u2019s intentions in a \u2018perfect\u2019 way. Naturally this is impossible. That is why each subsequent painting is born from dissatisfaction with the previous one. This is what makes art sublime, what causes it to aspire toward the Absolute.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Among the subjects chosen for the Palermo exhibition appear dragons, serpents, zebras, owls, winged horses, lions, together with many palm trees. Why?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cPalm trees are sacred trees; symbolically they represent my youth. Like animals, they are linked to my childhood spent in Acireale, surrounded by the papers and colours of the studio of a science teacher who loved drawing butterflies and lions. At the time I was four years old. Later I moved with my family to Palermo, enrolled in the art high school, and one day in 1965 I received a package bearing the Acireale postmark. Inside were all the original illustrations of the animals, accompanied by a letter that, for me, became both an invitation and a testament to continue that work.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

After so many journeys around the world, has Madaudo decided to stop?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cExtraordinarily, the desire to return to Palermo, to express myself within this reality, was born while I was in Japan and saw again those colours that I had not understood during my childhood. It was a circle closing. From there came the idea of undertaking this exhibition, the result of more than a year\u2019s work on paintings created in Palermo.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

But will Madaudo once again become a \u201cmigratory painter\u201d?<\/p>\r\n

\u201cIn my imagination there still exists a journey around the world in a caravan, similar to the one in Pinocchio<\/em>, used by gypsies.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Loredana Cacicia Biondo<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"featured_media":307,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-306","news_intervista","type-news_intervista","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_intervista\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_intervista"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news_intervista"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaudo.art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}