Roberto Mauri (1977) - Casetta tra i papaveri e il mare

Title: Little House among the Poppies and the Sea

The work is an oil on canvas 30x30 cm that depicts an idealized rural landscape, built from a few essential elements: a vast field of poppies, a small rural house, a leafy tree, and in the background, the line of the sea beneath a clear sky. The composition, typical of Roberto Mauri's contemporary landscape research, highlights the dialogue between solitude and quiet, transforming the scene into a mental place rather than a real one, where color becomes the absolute protagonist of the painting's narrative.
The poppy field occupies almost the entire lower part of the painting with an intense, vibrant red, laid in tactile swathes that suggest movement and depth, intensified by light, perspectival touches that guide the eye toward the horizon. At the bottom, the band of poppies in close-up creates an almost ornamental edge, in which hints of green and orange light up the visual rhythm and make tangible the sense of a dense, fragrant bloom.
At the center of the painting stands a small white cottage with a red-orange roof, a simple and compact form that provides a steady reference point in the chromatic sea of the field, evoking a discreet and gathered human presence. Next to the house, a tree with a full, rounded crown, shaped with varied greens and overlapping brushstrokes, serves as a hinge between earth and sky, balancing the masses and reinforcing the verticality at the heart of the composition.
Behind the field, a strip of cooler green introduces the blue band of the sea, rendered with a compact and luminous tone that suggests calm and distance, while three slender white sails dot the horizon, adding a hint of life and movement. The sky, a deep blue that lightens toward the top, is animated by light, softly shaded white clouds, whose soft shapes contrast with the sharp lines of the earthly plains, giving the whole an airy and contemplative dimension.
The scene is constructed with rigorous formal synthesis: few elements, a precise geometric structure, strong chromatic contrasts, in line with the minimalist and lyrical language that characterizes Roberto Mauri's painting. The work conveys a sense of quiet and suspension, where the solitary rural architecture immersed in a field of poppies becomes a metaphor for a gathered intimacy, nestled between the emotional intensity of red and the serene infinity of the sea and the sky.