"Not since the Museum of non-Objective Art in New York morphed into the Guggenheim Museum more than half a century ago has there been anything like this in North America "
April 30, 2010 (MMD Newswire) -- Volf Roitman: From MADI to the Ludic Revolution is a series of major retrospective exhibitions celebrating the 60-year-long career of the ever-young, ever innovative painter, sculptor, architect, novelist, playwright, cineaste, and humorist Volf Roitman. These forthcoming retrospectives will take place at the Leepa Rattner Museum in Tarpon Springs from May 16 to July 18 and in the The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, from May 26 to August 29. The retrospective kicked off at the University of Florence in Italy in April, under the auspices of the Centro Studi Jorge Eielson, with seminars devoted to Roitman's sculpture, paintings and literary works.
Samples of Roitman's work from the ‘50s to the present will be on show, including a splendid array of motorized, kinetic works of a humorous style that represent what Roitman likes to refer to as a Mondrian-like child's vision of life and art. His newest innovations include giant MADI banners; and MADI Lightboxes - large, eerily-glowing backlit sculptures. The exhibition will celebrate the Ludic, or playfulness and whimsical, which is the basis of all his art.
"In recent years, above all in my kinetic work, I have tried to insert humorous elements that will hopefully amuse and delight the spectator. Even as I try to perfect them, I want the spectator to be injected into my works and emerge with feelings of playfulness and whimsy, ready to embark on a personal artistic journey."
Roitman has also taken his work to totally new dimensions by covering ordinary buildings, such as the Wood Building in Marshall, Texas, and the MADI Museum in Dallas with his vividly colored, three-dimensional panels, thus creating giant MADI "sculpture" pieces. As for his pictorial work, as long ago as the fifties, the renowned French critic and Mondrian biographer Michael Seuphor labelled him as "the finest of all the MADI artists".
ABOUT VOLF ROITMAN www.volfroitman.com
A citizen of the world, sometimes referred to as a Renaissance man, Roitman was born in 1930 in Uruguay of Russian/Romanian parents, grew up in Argentina where he received a degree in architecture while co-editing a cult poetry magazine, and at age twenty, moved to Paris. With Carmelo Arden Quin, founder of the Latin American art movement MADI, he instantly morphed into a painter while helping to relaunch MADI, first in France and eventually across four continents. Roitman was the first MADI artist to hold a one-man show at the Galerie de Beaune in Paris in 1955. Still changing countries and cultures, he has lived in Spain, the U.K., Ireland, and presently outside of Tampa, Florida, and has always remained faithful to the MADI Concept of whimsical humor within the boundaries of colorful geometric abstraction.
Roitman has shown his paintings, unique paper sculptures, and new large metal sculpture pieces in over 150 solo and group exhibitions, including four of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Spain, and in Florida at the Capitol Building in Tallahassee; the Sarasota Art Center; the Gulf Coast Museum of Art; Pasco Art Center; the South Art and Segnini Galleries in Miami; the Polk Museum; and twice at the Leepa Rattner Museum.
In 1951 in Paris, Roitman and Carmelo Arden Quin founded the MADI Research and Study Center, an entity that has evolved over the years into MADI International, the longest-running, continuously active art movement in the world.
Roitman lives with his Texan-born wife, the author Shelley Goodman, also known as Shelley V Ashley.
About MADI
In 1946 in Buenos Aires, Carmelo Arden Quin articulated the ideas of the MADI movement in his MADI Manifesto. Some say the letters MADI stand for Movimiento Artistico De Invencion. Others say the letters MADI stand for MAterialismo DIalectismo (Dialectical Materialism). Still others say it is taken from letters in the name CarMelo ArDen QuIn. Whatever the origins of the name, the movement has combined complexity and uniqueness with playfulness and whimsy, particularly in the case of Roitman. Focusing on geometric shapes that spill out of the traditional frame, and articulated and mobile structures, MADI artists refuse to make the object representative, but rather focus on the object and the colors themselves. One does not have to look for meaning behind the art, but rather enjoy each piece for itself.
Today there are MADI artists in over 15 countries. France, Italy, and Hungary all have strong MADI organizations, with whole colonies of practicing artists. There are MADI artists in, among others, Argentina, Venezuela, Japan, Spain, and the United States.
For more information and images contact:
Scarlett Roitman - +44 7786 266866 - scarlettroitman@yahoo.com
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