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Aria Lai (Ulassai, 27 September 1919 – Cardedu, 16 April 2013) was an Italian artist. The Museum of Contemporary Art the Art Station has the largest public collection of the artist's works. Read the full biography

Aria Lai (Ulassai, 27 September 1919 – Cardedu, 16 April 2013) was an Italian artist. The Museum of Contemporary Art the Art Station has the largest public collection of the artist's works. With Legarsi alla montana he created the first work of relational art at an international level. Maria Lai was born in 1919 in the town of Ulassai, in the Barbagia sub-region of Ogliastra. Daughter of Giuseppe and Sofia Mereu, Maria Lai is the second of five children, aunt of the photographer Virgilio Lai and the writer Maria Pia Lai Guaita. During her childhood she was in rather poor health, which led her to be transferred for the winter months from the town of Ulassai to the Gairo plain in order to recover: she was hosted by childless farmer uncles. In the winter months he completely skips nursery and elementary schools; in complete isolation he begins to discover and grasp within himself the aptitude for drawing. In 1933 Cornelia, her younger sister, died and Maria posed as a model for Francesco Ciusa. It was on this sad occasion that she saw the artist's workshop for the first time and the atmosphere of the art world in which she remained deeply impressed and fascinated. . The family decides to enroll her in secondary schools in Cagliari, where she is lucky enough to meet her Italian teacher Salvatore Cambosu. He was the first to understand the girl's difficulties in entering school and was the first to discover her artistic sensitivity; thanks to him, the young student from Ulasse will take charge of the importance and value of Latin and poetry and will discover "the value of the rhythm of words that lead to silence". In 1939, "albeit with many difficulties", she decided to continue her search for the sign, enrolling at the Art School of Rome, where she met sculpture masters such as Angelo Prini and Marino Mazzacurati, who immediately saw in her a mature and very masculine sign. , extremely essential and quick. Having completed his high school studies, he will leave for Verona and, shortly after, Venice, since the Second World War prevents his return to Sardinia. Having moved to Venice without any financial help from her family, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, where she attended a sculpture course held by the artist Arturo Martini and Alberto Viani, with the artist Mario De Luigi as her tutor. In the Venetian academic environment he encountered various difficulties. Initially, the figure of her master, who struggles to accept women in the art world, is disarming for her; furthermore, at that time he goes through a poetic crisis and only later begins to understand how important his lessons are, finding various affinities with Cambosu, that is, on the value of rhythm, "in this case in sculpture". In 1945 he decided to return to Sardinia in a daring way, with lifeboats from the port of Naples to that of Cagliari. He remained on the island until 1954; in the meantime he resumed his friendship with Salvatore Cambosu and taught drawing at elementary schools in the city and in some towns. From this period is the friendship with the writer and artist Foiso Fois. In 1947 his older brother Gianni was ambushed, in an attempted kidnapping, near Monte Codi in the Ulassai area: he was miraculously saved, thanks to the prompt intervention of a van of American soldiers in transit in that area. He returned to Rome in 1954, bringing with him a baggage of profound sadness, due to the murder of his younger brother Lorenzo, which occurred the same year near Ulassai. In 1957, at Irene Brin's L'Obelisco gallery, he held his first solo show with pencil drawings from 1941 to 1954; in the meantime he will be able to open a small art studio, establish friendships with artists such as Jorge Eduardo Eielson, and in the meantime appear in some television reports of the Istituto Luce. After the exhibition, everything seems to be going well; but suddenly she decides to withdraw from the world of art, in a silence that will accompany her for about 10 years: a poetic crisis that keeps her away from galleries and artists, but which brings her closer to the world of poets and writers. Throughout the sixties, in fact, he cultivated a relationship of friendship and collaboration with the writer Giuseppe Dessì, next door to his house in Rome. In 1963 between Ulassai and Cardedu, in Sardinia, there was another violent shootout between the police and bandits at his country house where his parents had already resided for some time, due to yet another kidnapping attempt against his brother-in-law. Through the writer Giuseppe Dessì, he rediscovers the meaning of the myth and legends of his land, draws profound inspiration from his books, understands even more how important and privileged his Sardinian origin is. In this Roman silence, he observes the emerging contemporary currents, such as Arte Povera and the Informal, and shortly thereafter understands how important Martini's lessons were (initially experienced as a complete failure), Cambosu's words, the traditions , the myths and legends of his native land. By intervening on the material through the anxious Ready-made objects of the loom and the magic of its use, of the bread and of the objects of the archaic Sardinian past, he begins his journey, which sees the past as an investigation of the future. 1971 was a sad year for her and at the same time extremely fruitful of activity: sad because in September her only remaining brother, Gianni, died in a plane crash; while on an artistic level, at the Schneider Gallery in Rome, he exhibited the first Frames, the exhibition was curated by Marcello Venturoli, a cycle that characterized all the following ten years. An approach to textile art favored by the meeting with the master Enrico Accatino who began to work for the relaunch of textile art, also involving some Sardinian factories. In 1976 he met Angela Grilletti Migliavacca, owner and director of the Arte Duchamp gallery in Cagliari and his future personal curator, with whom he would later have a decades-long working and friendship relationship. In 1977 he met the art historian Mirella Bentivoglio who the following year allowed Maria to land at the Venice Biennale. The eighties of the twentieth century, however, are characterized by the cycle of Geographies and Sewn Books. They begin to ask her for collaborations for covers (for example the real book by Giulio Angioni, A fogu aintru, EDeS, 1978, with drawings by Maria Lai[3]), and many others, but above all the first operations in the area begin : "Legarsi alla Montagna", for example, is the work that leads her to the creation of future works in the town of Ulassai, in Rome she becomes friends with Bruno Munari and in New York with Costantino Nivola. In recent years he also often created ephemeral installations and works in other cities, not just in Sardinia. In the nineties his works appear as a reinterpretation of his overall path and the various cycles are harmoniously assembled with each other; the unexpected speed of the signs-drawings merges with the tangles of threads and loom cords and of Geographies. In this historical context his work will also be highly appreciated at an international level; his friendship with the stylist Antonio Marras and the singers Marisa Sannia and Elena Ledda dates back to these years. In recent years he has lived and worked in the country house near the town of Cardedu; in Ulassai, however, on 8 July 2006 he inaugurated the Stazione dell'arte Museum of Contemporary Art, which collects a considerable part (about 140 pieces) of his works; after the success of the museum, his works entered the Institutions most important, such as Palazzo Grassi in Venice with the "Italic" exhibition curated by Francesco Bonami, at Palazzo Mirto and Villa Borghese in Rome. After recent exhibitions in the United States and other prestigious European events, Maria Lai is recognized as one of the most significant artists in Sardinia. She died in 2013 and was buried at the Ulassai cemetery, next to her family.