Giuseppe Maraniello

1945, Naples, Italy

Giuseppe Maraniello lives and works in Milan. After his artistic studies and years spent teaching, he developed a practice combining painting, sculpture and the assemblage of different materials, creating a deeply imaginative and personal language.
His works are inhabited by symbolic figures, fantastical creatures, archers, tightrope walkers and presences suspended between myth and memory. Wood, iron, bronze and salvaged materials become part of compositions that seem like ritual objects or fragments of ancient tales.
In 1990 he took part in the Venice Biennale with a dedicated solo room. His monumental works can be found in major Italian and international collections and public spaces.

This work feels like a small mental theatre built from fragments of landscape, matter and memory. The dark wood at the sides recalls two open panels, as if the central image held something intimate or distant within it.
Inside this space appears an essential landscape: mountains, yellow fields, a clear sky. But it is not a realistic landscape. It resembles instead a memory simplified by time, something that remains in the mind more than in the eyes.
The white figure at the bottom left is almost a primitive sign, fragile, suspended. It could be a man, a symbol, a minimal presence within an immense space. And it is perhaps there that the title Tu e Io (You and I) becomes most intense: not as a precise story, but as distance, silent dialogue, relation.
Maraniello manages to make this small work feel like a found object, worn by time, yet still able to hold personal images, visions and mysteries.