Nicola De Maria
Nicola De Maria was born in Foglianise, Sannio, in 1954 and is one of the 5 main artists of the Transavanguardia movement launched by Achille Bonito Oliva in 1978. He was the only abstract or, as they called it then, aniconic artist among them, the others (Chia, Clemente, Cucchi and Paladino) being instead iconic. His painting mostly consists of elementary shapes: circles, stars, simple geometries which recall natural elements such as flowers, moons, suns, heads, stars. There is poetry at the basis of his paintings; the titles often sound like verses of poetry which always echo the same words: flowers, angels, wind, love, feelings. It is almost like returning to the poetry of Umberto Saba: “la rima cuore amore / la più antica difficile del mondo” (“the heart-love rhyme / the oldest and most difficult in the world”). His paintings are almost poetic scores, where the painted elements of various, mostly primary colors are shifted over the canvas to create ever-changing harmonies.
Although at first his work seemed to have less impact than that of his colleagues, who were perhaps more integrated into the neo-expressionist trend of the moment, his quality slowly gained consideration among critics and curators and obtained more and more important confirmations from the market.
His works still do not reach the value of 200,000 dollars in auctions, but everything points to there being much room for gradual significant increases.
