Until March 5, 2021, the exhibition Roberta Meldini. Plastic Linearities and Sinuous Three-Dimensionality is open to the public at Palazzo Merulana. This is the first major retrospective monographic exhibition dedicated to the Rimini figurative artist, ten years after her passing in 2011. The exhibition, initiated by the newly established Association “Roberta Meldini for Contemporary Art”, curated by Brigida Mascitti, is a rare opportunity to explore, through over fifty works from the 1970s to the 1990s, the artistic and life journey of one of the most expressive and versatile artists in the national landscape of the second half of the short century that was the twentieth century.
Roberta Meldini, Woman with Dove, bronze, 1975 
Roberta Meldini, Figure at Rest, cement, 1972
The Living Emotion of Observation
Born in Rimini in 1930, Meldini moved to Rome at a young age, just after World War II, to study art, first obtaining her Artistic High School Diploma at the renowned Institute of Via di Ripetta and later at the Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied under Michele Guerrisi, Domenico Purificato, and Giuseppe Capogrossi, among others.
She later deepened her studies in sculpture, graphic arts, and engraving techniques, including the more ancient and obsolete ones (such as continuous line drawings), in which she proved to be an excellent executor.
Active for more than five decades, until the early years of the 21st century, Meldini was a multifaceted personality, heterogeneous in the references from which her gaze moved, as well as in the destinations to which her research often led her. In post-war Italy, approaching anything that leaned towards a recovery of form and plasticity, particularly in a sculptural key, was a challenging endeavor given the prevailing performative post-modernism. Her closeness to two “resistant” figures like Guerrisi and Purificato surely helped her in this regard, allowing her to reconstruct a personal “reinterpreted plasticity,” where the figurative culture of her time never renounced originality. While deeply attracted to clean and essential forms, such as those of Marino Marini or Henry Moore and Constantin Brancusi – showing a keen attention to the international scene as well – she never hesitated to self-denounce being profoundly informed in her style, in the constructive manner of the great bronze and marble reliefs of the Italian Renaissance (Donatello, Laurana to name a few) and, further, to Michelangelo’s sculpture.
Roberta Meldini, Woman with Ball, ink and hatching on paper, 1974 
Roberta Meldini, Woman in the Sun 5, refractory, 1999
Through the Eyes of the Artist
A recurring theme among the works on display at Palazzo Merulana is “the praise of life,” in whatever form – human, animal, or natural – it manifests. This praise is certainly well highlighted and emphasized by the constant exaltation of an iconographic subject of reference, which is the woman and, more generally, the feminine in all its forms; the woman, through her body, produces life and thus contributes to the course of existence. Her modern round-bodied Afrodites are reclining and idle places of non-action, where the dense volumetric block carries an almost totemic meaning; many new “Venus of Willendorf” that assume expressive, formal, psychological, and philosophical meanings. Smooth and clean forms, of pure avant-garde, suddenly ripple slightly, barely noticeable, denoting wrinkles, hair, and facial features. Barely incised surfaces reveal somatic characteristics, giving the idea of movement, which also seem to recall Medardo Rosso.
Parallel to this vein, there is another one, perhaps stemming from the unfinished Michelangelo, which leads her to express and “bring out,” through her painting, a much more narrative, almost expressionist matrix, as seen in her portraits; at other times, she seems more interested in storytelling, in chronicling the events of everyday life, whether they are amusing or melancholic, but always well channeled by the colors of her oils and temperas.
The animals, often rendered in sculptural form, are surprising both for the variety and quality of the various production techniques employed, and for the sentiment that emanates from them; almost hyper-realistic, they skillfully blend direct observation of reality and analysis of past bestiaries (greatly influenced by Giambologna), which Meldini often interprets with irony, putting them at the service of narrating the flaws of human beings.
Finally, her graphic production is also remarkable, showcasing her mastery of the techniques related to its realization. Rarely do her drawings appear to be preliminary sketches for something else; instead, they often possess their own artistic dignity. The woman, here too, emerges as a queen, with her massive physicality, her dense and three-dimensional volumes rendered by a quick, thin line, enriched by pure colors. All of this is made even more precious by the limited number of etched zinc plates – about thirty – for her etchings, from which each subject was rarely reprinted more than sixty times, with rather limited editions.
