Roberto Mauri (1977) - La casa tra i papaveri

Artist: Roberto Mauri
Title: The House Among the Poppies
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30 x 30 cm

The oil painting on canvas (30×30 cm) by Roberto Mauri presents itself as a contemporary landscape work with a strong chromatic impact and an essential yet vibrant compositional setup.
In the center of the scene dominates a wide field of poppies in full bloom, rendered with a bright, almost incandescent red, extending over much of the lower and central surface of the canvas. This vermilion mantle is not uniform: the artist modulates the color with quick, thick brushstrokes, creating a pulsating texture made of countless single brushstrokes that evoke thousands of swaying petals. The red brightens in areas of pure carmine and softens in transitions toward orange-brown or the deeper crimsons in the shadows, conveying a sense of summer warmth and exuberant vitality.
The flowering field is bounded at the top by a strip of bright, almost acidic green, representing meadows or growing crops: a stark, complementary contrast with the dominant red, generating an optical effect of extraordinary luminosity. Beyond this green band opens a farther stretch of cultivated land, painted with ocher-yellowish tones and softer greens, suggesting the depth and vastness of the plain.
At the center of the painting, isolated and almost symbolic, rises a small traditional rural house, with white, cracked walls and a reddish-brown tiled roof. The structure is minuscule compared to the expanse of the landscape, but gains presence through the contrast with the surrounding color: the white walls reflect the sky light and serve as a visual resting point amid the chromatic tumult. A few architectural details – a dark door, a small window – suffice to give it the identity of a melancholic, solitary peasant ruin.
To the sides of the house stand two slender trees, probably birches or young poplars, with crowns of bright, luminous green, almost emerald. The leaves are suggested with quick, luminous touches that catch the light and create a pleasant vertical counterpoint to the horizontality of the field.
The sky occupies the upper part of the composition and is treated with a deep, uniform blue, rich but not somber, dotted with a few white clouds with soft, puffy outlines. The light seems to come from a high, invisible sun, flooding the scene evenly without casting sharp shadows, giving the whole a midsummer southern atmosphere, almost timeless.
The overall work reveals an expressionist-luminist painting language, which privileges chromatic emotion and immediate visual impact over descriptive realism. The primary colors – blue, red, green – are used in purity and with resolve, almost naïve, but the confident brushwork and the calibrated distribution of masses demonstrate a mature compositional awareness.