Malisa Catalani is back on show in Galleria Cavour

After the great success of her exhibition at ArtCity at Palazzo Vassè Pietramellara, with over 40,000 visitors, Malisa Catalani, aka Malisarts, returns to Galleria Cavour with a temporary exhibition that literally showcases her magnetic works.

Amidst the boutiques of Tiffany, Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton, Catalani’s creations, just like precious jewels, show themselves in all their strength, recounting with rare sensitivity the many facets of the female body and soul, a theme that has always been dear to the artist. The exhibition, curated by the renowned SimonBart Gallery, brings the designer’s bronze heroines back to centre stage. Prominent among them is a piece from the “Butterfly” cycle where, from the female bodies, real wings rise up made from casting waste and whose fragments, welded one by one, enrich the aesthetics of the work. The meaning is material but also metaphorical: we too can be reborn from the hard times of life and shine from waste just like a butterfly that, once it has emerged from the cocoon, is then ready to take flight.

Among the works on display shines Artemis, goddess of the woods, wild and untamed exactly as the myth tells. She was born from the artist’s intuition inspired by the play of light from the sun’s rays penetrating the branches and foliage in the shade of the trees. It is no coincidence that the sculpture belongs to the acclaimed “Rebirth” cycle, which symbolises rebirth, and in this bust, elegant and strong at the same time, the goddess seems to be immortalised in the act of breathing deeply, free from the apnoea of life and its bad weather. Impossible, then, not to be captivated by Gea, junoesque and powerful as the very personification of Mother Earth. Catalani imagines her fragmented in two: after all, the very act of generating life passes through a laceration. It is, in fact, from wounds that light penetrates and not even the generating force of Gea can escape this natural law.

Malisa also has clear ideas when it comes to reproducing Venus, the goddess of beauty. She too, in fact, is not without scars, but it is from these that she derives her true splendour. She does not cover them, but displays them like medals: the work reminds us that beauty is not perfection but evolution, acceptance, courage. Fighting, seductive, generating, Malisa Catalani’s women are goddesses, everyday heroines, souls in reconstruction: they show this in every detail as the bronzes of Rebirth and Aphrodite also remind us. Each creation is the result of careful research. From inspiration, the process passes through anatomical study, terracotta prototypes, moulds and the foundry where ideas materialise. For this last essential moment, Malisa has long relied on the historic Venturi foundry in Bologna, known for collaborating with the likes of Gilbert Kruft and Salvador Dali. It is no coincidence that Catalani chose this very workshop, led for three generations only by women, to mould her creations: hers is an artistic tale that accompanies the viewer into the deepest folds of femininity and returns an authentic, innovative and purely emotional vision of it.