Bona de Mandiargues, a disturbing and visionary artist
Francesca Cogoni, RSI
June 2024
‘Such is the world of our painter, […] a poetic world that flees as far as possible from a world that is too human, without denying it.’ This is how the painter Gino Severini introduced one of the first solo exhibitions of his young colleague Bona de Mandiargues in Rome in 1954. A disturbing and visionary artist, Bona ‒ who signed her works simply with this gentle and auspicious name ‒ spanned the twentieth century, giving shape throughout her life to this peculiar ‘poetic world’: a fantastic and sometimes indecipherable universe, inhabited by metamorphic and mysterious figures.
Perhaps it is also because of her avoidance of a ‘world that is too human’ ‒ and certainly too conformist and rigid for her ‒ that Bona de Mandiargues has remained in the shadows for years. Fortunately, however, in recent times her work has been rediscovered. This occurred first with the beautiful exhibition ‘Bona de Mandiargues. Remaking the world’, held at the Museo Nivola in Orani (NU) until last March 3, and subsequently with the artist’s presence in the main exhibition of the current Art Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa, entitled ‘Stranieri Ovunque / Foreigners Everywhere’.