Mai Sedersi sugli Allori
11
T h e l a n g u a g e o f f e e l i n g s
Imagine an armchair in which you are seated in the quiet,
elegant living-room of a grand country mansion, when sud-
denly, out of its back, a loud flock of multicoloured parrots or
a swarm of tropical butterflies flies away… But no, you can’t
believe it, it is a Machoan butterfly that is inviting you to rest
in the velvety embrace of its splendid wings. Wonders, real
wonders! Such are the sculptures of the extraordinary artist,
starter of t he new direction taken of the “art of interiors”,
the Italian Carla Tolomeo, well known and famous in the 80’s
as a cultured and refined painter, whom we owe many valu-
able public works, like the mosaic in the subway of Bisceglie,
the painting at the Palace of Justice in Milan, the fresco in
Seregno.A wide ranging artist.
Then Tolomeo surprised us, when she began with non-
chalance, almost on tip-toes, a personal revolution that
determined an artistic current that has become ‘trendy’ as
we say today.She built the Chairs – obets d’art with pecu-
liar aesthetic characteristics and a striking visual effect, that
surely have their roots in the suggestions of Surrealism, in
the Furniture in the Valley by De Chirico, in the lip-shaped
sofa by Salvador Dalì. But Tolomeo insists and goes beyond,
raising the chair to Absolute Art.
It is maybe the Latin temperament of this famous woman,
whose creations decorate the homes of many celebrities in
the Old and the New World, or maybe it is her personal passion
for colour, the sun, the exotic, but the works by Carla tolomeo
always radiate suggestions of enchanted woods, of gardens
in Capri, of sunsets in Saint Petersburg, where she recently
held a successful exhibition.The skilful irony with which this
artist conveys, invents and builds her ‘absurd’ poetics culmi-
nates into titles that sound like quotations: “Do you know the
country where the lemons flower?” – Sign of Pisces, Eve’s
leaf, Eve’s temptations – homage to Casanova.Turning the
pages of her book – Never sit on your laurels – I am struck bu
the total amusement that these creations convey, covered as
they are with wonderful haute couture textiles – silks and vel-
vets, brocades and moiré silks – to the point that they create
the unrepeatable atmosphere of a living window, a moveable
sculpture, or a three-dimensional canvas.No wonder then if
her transformations may seem very theatrical, even opera-
like, but certainly they are sublime stage accessories: and
they actually do miracles, creating a magical art that is akin
to the Pop Art of the 1970’s, to the works by Rauschenberg
and Warhol’s canvases, with Mozart in the background.
Carla Tolomeo can find an old chair in the shop of an
antique dealer and deliver it into a long journey in t he worls
of fantasy, in which there are no visible boundaries.Here’s a
totem, a Trajan’s column with fishes and hearts. Here’s an-
other one, coming from the Venice Carnival, that reminds the
spectator or the lucky owner of the famous escapades of the
indefatigable Casanova, the hero to whose life events Carla
has devoted much of her time.Despite the internationality of
Tolomeo’s art, with works kept in many museums and col-
lections, from the USA to Russia, China, Korea and Japan,
what they really effuse is the perfume of Italy.And it is not by
chance that her most important gallery should be Italian, with
venues in Florence, Venice, Milan, Carla’s favourite cities.And
here, let me praise Roberto Casamonti, to have intuitively
perceived that this anomalous artist would be able to keep
an almost surrealistic distance from the common coarseness
of modern daily life and praise to Mirabili.
There is much “status” in Tolomeo’s works – as they often
recall the sumptuous thrones in the Emperors’ Palaces in
our childhood dreams – and it not a coincidence that such
works, truly unique in the panorama of modern art, ended up
into the private collections of the last princes and kings, as
