Donnino Rumi
    ... Painter ...

    [Self Portrait, cm 57x37] [My Father Portrait, cm 70x36] It is as if a fifty years old painter, once more pulls out the brushes of his youth, which even then had served him so well, and discovers himself to be at the height of his creativity, a creativity that had been nurtured but not extinguished by the experienc and meditation of those silent years. An incredible experience!
    It is impossible here to cover all the prehistory of Donnino Rumi. His pictures before 1925 when he was under twenty (he was born at Bergamo in 1906) and those of the following decade, scarcer for reasons of work. We must turn over the page, knowing that he was altogether involved in another activity, that of his father iron works, remember however that he was always in a state of tension. He was constantly aware of the world of art and always ready to take up again. A step that would in fact come later, at an already mature age. So, turning over the pages, there appear to be a lot of blank space but this is misleading, for instead it was a period of silent preparation. It must be interpreted in this way, given the confidence with which he restarted. This is already observable in certain pictures of '48-'49, but is splendidly evident in the series beginning from '57.
    [No Title, cm 97x100] [No Title, cm 100x80] What was it that <<incubated>> Rumi in this long silence? What cultural forces, what emotions, what energy, and what values both moral and estetic?
    In an effort to understand this I try to discover connections and links and to identify styhstics matrixes. It is obvious that history, with its enormous pool of human experiences, is behind his pictures. It gives them life and movement.
    If we start from immediate impressions - the French culture of the 1870's comes instantly to mind. The two poles are Daumier and Manet. From the first comes that sense of bitterness concerning the human experience, even of grotesqueness, a paint with a realistic base but softened and almost nutured by the contradictions of a society in feline (ref - Zola and Victor Hugo). Maybe it was not by chance that Rumi "Ieant" on this historical period given that it was so similar to his own Italy of the 1950's - full of uncertainty and social cultural tension (at the time of the Paris Comune literature was full of these themes).
    [No Title, cm 130x80] [Self portrait with model, cm 100x80] From Manet comes that extraordinary psycological introspection, which starting with <<Olympia>>, continues throughout a series of pictures and thrusts the scapel even deeper into the wounds of a humanity already full of malessere.. Certain of Rumi's nudes, such as the <:<Risveglio>> 1959, derive from the cultural climate of Manet, while certain portraits of the same years derive from the teachings of Daumier (Il pittore e la modella).....

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