Photo by Ciriaco Lo Conte.
Photo by Daniela Zedda
Maria Lai was born on September 27, 1919 in Ulàssai, Sardegna, Italy. Daughter of Giuseppe and Sofia Mereu, she was the second of five children. Maria had sisters Giuliana and Cornelia, the youngest sister in the family. At the age of three years, Maria lived with her aunt and uncle because of her poor health, and she stayed with them until the age of nine.
After a brief return to Ulassai, Maria Lai moved to Cagliari, where she entered the school at the age of nine. There she met an Italian teacher Salvatore Cambosu, who later became her mentor and a close friend.
In 1939 she decided to move to Rome to study at the Art School, where she attended the lessons of Marino Mazzacurati. In 1943, because of the war he decided to leave Rome, and he moved to Venice to attend the Academy of Fine Arts with Arturo Martini.
In 2004 she was awarded an honorary degree in Literature at the University of Cagliari for the stretch strongly narrative and conceptual of her work.
Maria Lai exhibited several times in Cagliari and then in 1957 she exhibited at the Galleria L’Obelisco in Rome. Up to 1961 she received significant success and recognition in Rome and Sardinia.
Then, for about ten years, there was a period of silence. Only in 1971, after a long withdrawal from the art scene, she exhibited at the Galleria Schneider in Rome. There she exhibited her works, including "Telai" (Looms), "Tele cucite" (Sewn canvases), "Lavagne" (Blackboards), "Geografie" (Geographies), "Lenzuoli" (Sheets).
From that time began a very prolific phase for her art - she exhibited in several museums and galleries and at the Venice Biennale in a group show curated by Mirella Bentivoglio.
Her collective performance “Bind the mountain” took place in Ulassai In 1981. She seamed together the entire village by making a blue ribbon fashioned from jeans fabric run from house to house, all the way up to the top of the impending mountain. This “social sculpture” was followed by other public actions and works in Aggius, Camerino, Orotelli, Siliqua, and Villasimius, as well as by new open air projects in Ulassai.
In 1993 Lai left Rome and settled in Cardedu. Beides, Lai collaborated with theater company "Fueddu and Gestu” with the performance “Mary Stone” in 1995, ran workshops in schools, and voiced her story in artist books such as "La barca di carta" ("The paper boat", Arte Duchamp, Cagliari, 1996).
From 1999 to 2001 she devoted herself to the project for the Sabina Olive Oil Museum in Castelnuovo di Farfa.
In 2012 Lai participated in the International Fair of Contemporary Art "Pulse" in Miami.
Maria Lai died on April 16, 2013 in Cardedu, Sardegna, Italy.
After the exhibitions in the United States and other prestigious European events, Maria Lai was recognized as one of the most significant artists in Sardinia, Italy.
On the 8th of July 2006, Lai inaugurated the Museum of Contemporary Art that is located in the old buildings of the former station Ulassai and collects 140 most significant of her career works.
Besides, Maria Lai won the prestigious award from the Chamber of Deputies for the 150th anniversary of Italy in 2011, with the work “Footprints of laws”.
Quotations:
“Man needs to put togther visible and invisible therefore he creates fairy tales, myths, legends, feasts, chants, arts.”
“The art is born from the tragedy and insecurity in the world, but does not close, in fact, he opens and expands the consciousness of every possible reader."
“When the tape is lifted as an arc, from the mountains to the roofs of houses, it looks like a water jet.”
“The man is absolutely incomprehensible with the only reason, therefore, can not live without God and without the art.”
“The artwork occupies a small space, but as the atom, can upset an immense space.”
“Every human being can deny its concern, or seek answers in religion or art.”
“Playing is the children’s art, art is the game of the adults. Happiness does not come from the dream, but from the possibility of inventing life in poetic dimension. There are games that led to nowhere, are games without rules, reverie. Playing, like art, has strict rules and a car wearing away.”
“The view is not yet look, is animal nature. The look is a human building, artifice, such as speech, writing and all forms of art.”
“It feels satiated before the body has assimilated the food. Even the digestion of art is never immediate.”
“The artwork in itself has no meaning, does not contain a thought, but it can produce it.”
“The artwork is produced in solitude, but is accumulated in the sediment of cultures for thousands of years of collective experience.”
Maria Lai befriended and collaborated with the writer Giuseppe Dessi, a fellow Sardinian and her neighbour in Rome.
