The programme of the Madlena Art Palace was launched with a visual sensation, with originality and courage – with the exhibition of chairs by Italian artist Carla Tolomeo, who demonstrated esthetic exclusivity of the Apollonium category, implying works which surprise and excite, as an example and sign-post for future.
Beside the exhibition, with her creation of armchairs for the small circular theatre within the Palace, Carla Tolomeo provided a lasting contribution to the magic of the interior of the new edifice. The artist materialized her chairs playing with sculptural forms, lines, areas, volume, proportions, and rhythm. Beautiful chair forms, in gorgeous colours, as if transported from a most beautiful dream. Her armchairs, which encircle the whole stage area, were designed as exceptionally attractive works of art, decorated with colourful plastic textile appliques. The armchairs have been purchased, which means that they will remain as a permanent visual element of the small theatre.
More than 90 per cent of the one hundred 20-century chairs were designed by architects; for them, this was but a small-scale form of architecture because, same as the house, people populate the chair, which thus acts as an intermediary between the body and the ground, giving the person it is connected with safety, stability, and serenity. Artists also occupy themselves with chairs, redesigning them and dressing them in any manner conceivable. Chairs are dressed in silk and velvet, voile and wool, leather, cloth, paper, netting, and plastic.
This circle of artists certainly includes Carla Tolomeo, an Italian who lived in Rome for a long time where she acquired classical education, completed studies of political sciences, attended studios of great Italian painters (Giorgio de Chirico) and gained artistic maturity.
She was noticed as soon as her first one-artist exhibition in Rome. She lives and works in Milan, and is recognizable for her rich and versatile creative work and artistic practice. She has been quite successful in numerous disciplines and has proved her skills with almost all traditional means of expression. Esthetic in drawing, delicate in graphic, sovereign in classic techniques such as oil on canvas and pottery, creative in use of new materials and new manners of expression.
Carla’s work with chairs, objects – sculptures is more than recognizable and dedicated, and it brought her considerable success in the areas of design and interior decoration, capturing attention, and causing huge interest in public.
Madlena Zepter, a great lover and connoisseur of art, recognized the work of Carle Tolomeo and established long-term cooperation with the artist which continued to the present date.
Carla Tolomeo proposed a visual solution for the chamber theatre within the Madlena Palace, and designed unique chairs, armchairs, and backs upholstered in furniture cloth, playing with sculptural forms, lines, areas, volume, proportions, and rhythm.
Carla’s exhibition of ornamented and unusually imaginative chairs which capture attention and radiate numerous associations and meanings, and which bring us back to the time of mystification and disguise, time of sumptuous balls, festivities, and water festivals on Canal Grande in Venice, was organized, of all places, in the Madlena Art Palace. Imaginative playfulness and freedom of formal combining is even more pronounced in the new cycle of objects, pieces of furniture, chairs, tabourets, divans, Recamier sofas, etc.
The exuberance of motifs originating from the nature is expressed in incredible ranges of flora and fauna in expressionistic colours, which Carla Tolomeo uses to develop her vision.
Chairs by Carla Tolomeo, the exhibition of which left no one indifferent, have yet another common point with the Madlena Art Palace: the rich collection of the Museum of period furniture, lavish sets of authentic age, manufactured back in the time they belong to esthetics-wise. Here we are speaking about the drawing room in Style Empire (France), refined sceneries from Austria, Portugal, Far East, Venice, etc.
Opening the exhibition under the symbolic title “Would you like to sit on a work of art?”, Carla Tolomeo addressed those attending the event with the following words:
“Opening this exhibition, I should possibly be telling you about myself, my artistic life path which has, same as all other paths, been intercepted with obstacles and unexpected gifts, without the temporal dimension, so that work is the only unit of measure. This is why you can feel incredibly young or terribly old, it all depends on what you are about to achieve, something “new”, pleasure of creation or sorrow in the unavoidable conflict with reality.
However, it is my works that speak about me.
Today, here, I want to pay tribute to the almost Utopian vision of these patrons of art, Madlena and Philip, who knew how to make their dreams come true and how to jointly become icons of entrepreneurial reality which has kept growing without forgetting the value of culture.
Great patrons illuminate the history of humankind, but they are quite innumerous and tend to disappear in reality which denies the roots while making profit the only purpose.
Their greatness lies in the fact that they managed to extend to the present date the old dream of Marie Therese about Europe united by a written word, art, music, to oppose decadence and vulgarity which is certainly present.
This exhibition was also set in the light of their generosity.
This is a story which began long ago, fortuitously, and which has been consolidated though years of common feelings, identical goals, and mutual respect.
I first became acquainted Madlena Zepter through her books in which she wanted to tell stories of her country, art, writers, and courageous women; Madlena believes in the written word, in the value of printed paper which surpasses time and is transposed into eternity. Paraphrasing Proust, she is aware that, as long as there is someone keeping a book of hers and browsing through it, the message will remain alive and far-reaching, sowing the seed of hope for harmony, culture, and equality. In her, the most authentic “Mitteleuropa” – Central Europe revives founded on fundamental values and roots of our common history.
I think I have never encountered such a determined woman.
Our acquaintance continued at meetings, evening events at her theatre, in projects aimed at developing sets which I will create for her Madlenianum someday. It stands for all that is good and beautiful against mediocrity, evils and war.
One day, she came to my studio, and I believe that this was the moment when we sowed the seed of sympathy, and, if you allow, friendship which resulted in the selection of my works for the new theatre and the exhibition.
We jointly participated in panel sessions for her International award for design; we sung, and danced, and above all, dreamed, as the poet said: “Be careful, dreams sometimes come true”.
This exhibition is truly a dream come true”.