A chat with Roby Magall
Born in Milan, Roby Magall has spent his childhood a small town on the banks of the Adda river, where his grandparents' house was located. He exhibited for the first time at the Castello di Brivio (Lecco, Italy, picture below), with a solo exhibit entitled "Origins: Remote and Future" . From here his artistic adventure began, which keeps going after more than 40 years.
"It all began in 1975, when a close friend invited me to attend a painting exhibition in an early summer evening in Milan. The artist came from Northern Europe and was a Veteran of the Finnish-Russian war. He was so touched and upset by those events, that he was prescribed heavy drugs to regain his mental balance, but which side effects were hallucinogens. He had come to express on a really strange and twisted material something that touched the senses. Well, it was love at first sight for me, both with the author and with his works .
Without knowing that from this moment on my life would have changed, after a few days I began to "mess around" on that same material, so difficult to work with, and so aphrodisiac when you managed to tame it and finally see the finished work.
Since then, I have not been able to stop, although for quite a long time I had to put my art aside. One of the things I most liked to do but I had to find a job to survive with.
Completely self-taught, I began the adventure and immediately got in tune with that strange element that is polystyrene foam, a very difficult material that is always in motion. I love to combine it with various types of glue and silicones, caress it with the flame and fill it with colors, in some cases even aggressively. The resulting works have unimaginable chromatic effects, and when I get to perfectly externalize what I have in my mind, nothing else exists for me.
The most satisfying thing is that there is no option to copies the work piece, each one is unique, and I am not allowed to ever make mistakes: the material does not forgive me.
After many years of satisfaction, exhibitions and competitions and even some disappointments, even today, when I start a work it always seems the first time: there is the same enthusiasm and fervor as always, until it is finished, and my soul is filled with joy when a visitor appreciates my paintings."
Brivio's Castle, Lecco, Italy