Sergio Muntoni  

"The beauty of shape"

Considered by Paolo Levi 

(La Repubblica, Mondadori, Affari e finanza, perito d'arte)

At last with this painter from Nuoro we begin again to talk about figuration.

That series in which reality can’t escape to its destiny of human track.

Muntoni loves the typical land scape of his troubled and melancholy land

but he also gets the strength to represent farmers, peasants,

he is an artist melery of realistic school .

He seems looking back to social realisma of the 50 s. Subjects he loves draving

Are those ancients of the sardinias, silent farmers rich of pride and dignity.

In te background a field, an house.

Sergio Muntoni is a painter of dreams and memories where men countryside,

nature are related with emotion by the poet. So every morning represent the

first day of creation.

Sergio Muntoni is a painter of his own land, Sardinia, aristocratie as are

Aristocraties its peasants as joyful as its colours of sea and laud.

we can imagine the painter of sea and laud. We can imagine the painter

Befor beginning his work on the palette, that old one to mix the colours,

He prepares the painting with a drawing by a magnificient aut .

Only furtser Muntoni brings to light works like the harbour of Arbatax

or pictorial works by a soft realism.

Prof. Paolo levi

From volume : The beauty of shape- edited by G. Mondadori

The Beloved Histories and inner Geografies

Sergio Muntoni.        http://www.sergiomuntoni.it

  Is ther a link between the visual narration and the written one? Is ther a likenes between the coloured image and the image embellihedwith the letters of the alphabet?

Yes, ther is, wemay well consider a landscape-painter, whratever  current he belongs to, as the narrator of places visited physically or -why- not?- with memory or imagination.

Well, the artist’s duty in front of the vergin canvas in the same duty as the vriter’s even in the first uses colours instead of words. Sergio Muntoni plays this role of narrating voice the coloured tales of places, things, landscapes that sche puts on her cavans. All her works are free from the imperative of “ The art for the art” memories, old or new memories drive her hand, always.

  The narrating “I” , then,makes the difference between the work of this painter, and paitress considered as pure and simple “narration”. In hoter words, the landscapes painted by Sergio Muntoni are not simply lanscapes, and her stillives are not only that. The characters born on her canvas are pages of ant intimate diary that he reveals; they are strong feeling and beloved places, and persons drawn in their privacy, able to communicate the happyness of living.

 Sergio Muntoni‘s works offer more than some simple atmospheric emotion.

He loves deeply her land, thick with saps and colours.

 The relationship between places and memory must then go through the magic filter of emotion. The artist’s inspiration is evoked by the warmth of  the tones: the background is intense and vibrating, and its brillance confers a great platicism on characters and obiects.

 Sergio Muntoni’s paiting is embued with love, but not a sort of old romantic love: it a feeling that wnants to sublimate reality by coulors and strokes of brush, in order to preserve for always the integrity of the landscape.

  If  We want to paraphrase Calvino, who told that “ The impression is what remains in us after a dream”, we could say that  “the impression is what reamains in us after a look”.

  Monet would agree, and our artist,too.

  Sergio Muntoni privileges the landscapes in its reality,painted  “sur place” just have to close your eyes and leave the brush to find its colours by itself”

  Sergio Muntoni’s paiting is not simply made of places and landscapes of sentimental geographies, or glasshouses with pne thousand colours: we also find what we use to call “still-life”, that is with her more living than always.

 We wintness a true “poetics of image” made by plays of chromes and memories.

  Donat Conenna (critico, giornalista e storico dell’arte)