[…] my chariot stopped.
But I still walk to be free
like the wind that shakes the forest
like water flowing to the sea
like the music of a gypsy violin.
and
Free as gypsy music*
Olympius has disappeared trendy Dear poet, painter, musician and sculptor. Born seventy-seven years ago in a tent as he wrote in one of his poems, Mauso was one of the most complete and most versatile artists of the twentieth century. He leaves his partner, writer and photographer of Czech origin, Wolftraud Tradus Schreiber de Concini who accompanied him in his multifaceted artistic career.
Born in Saronno, during his childhood and youth he still knows all the beautiful and hard life of the Sinti of the past. He dedicates himself to various itinerant trades, until in 1985 he meets Tradus and he settled with her in Pergine Valsugana in Trentino.
I was able to admire for the first time the paintings of
trendy in Abruzzo almost twenty years ago when I helped Nazzareno Guarnieri to set up a painting exhibition in which the Mantuan painter also participated Angelo “LigaVacche” Proietti. Olimpio had just published his book Travel notes. Traces of a Gypsy childhoodpublished in 2005 also in German by a publishing house in Vienna with the title of Traveling. Traces of a gypsy childhood. A book of poems, stories and photographs that spanned his childhood. A book in which his sculptures of “dead” wood found along streams, lakes and seas were published for the first time, to which he restored a new soul and life.
I can define trendy the Italian artist who more than others has investigated his being Sinto through multiple artistic languages: music, poetry, painting and finally sculpture. Belonging to the Sinta Estrekarija linguistic minority, trendy he was an itinerant musician until 1985 when on the tomb of Marc Chagall, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in Provence, he heard the call to painting.
Olimpio owes his notoriety and European fame thanks to his painting. His paintings they amaze you with the soft stretch but at the same time they stun you with the many colors in which the portrayed cities are immersed. And it is precisely the city, or rather observing the city from the outside, that has predominantly guided his understanding of the world. A closed city, sometimes perched, which the painter watches from a meadow, perhaps coming out of a wood. A pointed and wrapped-up city that perhaps recalls the closures and thorny relationships that exist between the city, inhabited by gagé, and the Sinti who live in the meadows and woods alongside streams.
his paintings, trendy, paints them on an unusual material, glass: a metaphor of hardness and fragility at the same time. His stroke is sweet, almost maternal, around the city which, on the contrary, becomes angular, pungent. In one of his most famous paintings, an angel is painted in the sky with wings of a yellow color that surpasses even the color of the sun in splendour. trendy he loves color and his works are a dreamlike kaleidoscope of colored lights that take on unique reflections that strike the observer from wherever he is looking.
After the first exhibition, held in 1987 in Pergine Valsugana, in Trentino where he lived until the end, Mauso exhibited in many Italian cities including Rome and Venice and then throughout Austria including Vienna and Insbruck, in Budapest in Hungary, in Bratislava in Slovakia, in Bergün, Savognin and St. Moritz in Switzerland, in Cluny, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and Strasbourg in France. The latest exhibition in his Pergine Valsugana.
Alongside his artistic production he has also carried out, always with great passion, a vast educational activity, teaching the particular technique of painting on glass in schools but also making known the history of the Sinti linguistic minority. The actor and writer Pino Petruzzelli calls him to Genoa to teach in the theater school and inserts it in his book Don’t call me a gypsy a portrait of Olympius.
I have to remember the concert held in Bolzano in 2002 in favor of the children affected by the earthquake in Molise, organized by Radames Gabrielli president of theNevo Drom association. Opened and closed by Mauso with two poems by him: Go to the river e
Bare feet. The concert featured the I feel in their original lineup with guest stars a trendy tireless, remained on stage singing throughout the concert. From the concert a cd was made whose sale has always gone in favor of the children of Molise.
Someone wrote “And if it was said that after Auschwitz it would no longer be possible to write poetry, Olimpio Cari, belonging to a people victim ofHolocaustdemonstrates with his painting that dreams are still possible”.
*
I was born in a tent / on a summer night / in a gypsy camp / on the edge of town. / The crickets sang me a lullaby / the moon wrapped me in golden rays / and the women wore flowery skirts. / I grew up on a wagon / with creaking wheels. / We were boys / without yesterday and without tomorrow / we begged for bread in the rain and in the sun / we ran towards our dreams / our fantasies in the woods. / Now I have grown up / my tent is destroyed / my chariot has stopped. / But I still walk to be free / like the wind that shakes the woods / like the water that flows towards the sea / like the music of a gypsy violin.
Thanks to Traudi and Radames for their help in writing the post