MBAG - Barboncino Poodle

Opera: Poodle. Collection: Custodi
Custodi is the title of MBAG's new collection, a series of works created in recent years that delves into the deep relationship between human beings and animals. An ancestral bond, made of coexistence, protection, and mutual recognition, which runs through human history and continues to define its most intimate identity.
If man has always been the guardian of the natural world, today more than ever he feels the need to reestablish an authentic connection with other species, often forgotten or relegated to the margins of a society dominated by artifice. The collection is born precisely from this need: to bring animals back to the center of gaze, transforming them into symbolic and powerful presences within the domestic space, capable of transmitting an emotional frequency made of respect, empathy, and awareness.
The style draws inspiration from Pop Art, transforming animals into real stars, making them symbols of beauty as with Marilyn Monroe. Because society is now saturated with famous people, worldly images, products of consumerism, there is never enough authentic relations with the animal world.
The image is not a print; it is hand-painted with brush, with color details and textures that give materiality and intensity to the work.
The work is an original, and of great painting value, value that is augmented by the fact that it is the first of the subsequent series of works.

Biography:

MBAG was born in 2013 from the artistic and life partnership of Margherita Bobini and Andrea Gritti, two young artists graduated with honors in Painting from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin.

Margherita and Andrea began painting in two hands works that tell the beauty of nature through animal and plant subjects, with the aim of making every form of life known and respected.

Their art ranges from portraits with abstract and geometric backgrounds to different subjects each time, with the goal of capturing the observer’s eye through the contrast of bright colors, realistic subjects, and dynamic backgrounds with an expressive rendering free of melodrama but ironic and catchy.

In addition to important mural works, they often collaborate with the Museum of Urban Art, trying to grasp the sense and soul of places, dialoguing with the territories by painting urban furniture such as the famous Chairs-at-Home. Their works have been exhibited in Italy and China.

Their production features several drawings and paintings on canvas with subjects drawn from the natural and plant world, often presented in rhythmic blends with the human figure, which have been defined as “engaging and captivating, with a strong pop matrix.”

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What critics say:

M. Bobini and A. Gritti, known as MBAG, are a young and cohesive artistic duo whose work I have been following for several years; I have observed their evolution. In a few years they have established themselves on the Turin art scene with a concise and incisive style, made of bright, ringing colors and a knowing compositional rhythm.

In addition to important mural works, often commissioned by the Museum of Urban Art, where they have proven able to effectively grasp the sense and soul of places, dialoguing with the territories, Bobini and Gritti have developed an interesting series of works on canvas. The subjects range from portraits, painted with surprisingly expressive rendering free of melodrama but ironic and engaging, to representations of subjects from the natural and plant world, often presented in rhythmic blends with the human figure. This stems from their genuine passion for these worlds, which they practice by caring for unusual animal species unfairly deemed exotic.
MBAG has created engaging and captivating paintings with a strong pop matrix, where earth fruits that have always accompanied our daily life in a thousand ways are depicted in the foreground, towering over abstract backgrounds and dialoguing with actors of the animal world that rest softly on their surface, as companions on the journey of the natural universe.

Edoardo Di Mauro