Titina Maselli on the centenary of her birth

The staples of the exhibition

Exhibition highlights Let's start from some highlights of this beautiful anthological exhibition “Titina Maselli nel centenario della nascita” [“Titina Maselli on the centenary of her birth”]

• Titina Maselli (Rome, 1924–2005) was strikingly beautiful, quintessentially Roman, a bit melancholic, a bit defiant, with the unique feature of pronounced dark eye circles. Just like Anna Magnani, Maselli always lined her eyes in black with clear pride.
• Maselli's parents seem to have been big fans of nicknames. Her given name was Modesta while her brother was born Francesco, but everything knew him as Citto Maselli, the famed director. 
• Modesta, Titina's birth name, means “modest” in Italian, also described her character. Even though she was certainly a woman of the world, as seen in the videos shown at the exhibition, she was never ostentatious. 

Titina Maselli in New York

Maselli lived in New York from 1952 to 1955. She sought and found metropolitan modernity in her time in America, and its influence was felt in her paintings from that point on.  Her 1985 painting New York depicts a view with skyscrapers, a symbol of the American metropolis, where a weave of vertical and horizontal lines obstructs the view, conveying the hectic pace of modern city life.  The artist gifted the painted to the Civic Museums of Palazzo Bonaccorsi in Macerata which put on the solo exhibition: “Titina Maselli: Metropoli L'immagine ostruente” [Titina Maselli: Metropolis, The Obstructing Image'] She lived in New York, Vienna, and Paris and spoke fluent English and French. Her art, which is at long last being celebrated in her native Rome, has won over international audiences. The milieu she was raised in certainly helped shape her as it was full of artists and writers the likes of Corrado Alvaro, Emilio Cecchi, Alberto Savinio, Massimo Bontempelli, and Fausto Pirandello (to whom she was also related), as well as her husband, Toti Scialoia.

Toti Scialoja

In 1941, Maselli met the artist Toti Scialoja, with whom she shared artistic and intellectual interests. They married in 1945 and moved to Via di Porta Pinciana. They shared an impressive circle of friends, including Leoncillo Leonardi, Piero Sadun, Giovanni Stradone, Cesare Brandi, and Renzo Vespignani. The couple separated in 1950.

Titina Maselli's artistic style

Solid reference points disappear when we try to pin down her artistic style.  As her biographical summary puts it:

“Her early works were dense and pasty, influenced by the artists of the Roman School....her painting later took on a much more personal character far from “realism” with a social orientation and from abstraction...Maselli's paintings have been connected to those of Futurists and seen as forerunners of Pop Art.”

It is fair to say that her art, like that of all true artists, cannot be limited only to certain schools, movements, or trends. She was always free from any outside constraints or whims of fashion as she expressed her inner world in an original, eclectic style. Her art represents her hard-to-pin-down personality; as we can see in the exhibition videos, she walks through a flea market with the same classy ease and nonchalance with which she paints in her Paris studio in La Ruche on the Passage de Dantzig or sits on a bench surrounded by the garden of her home and claims to detest the countryside. Our full respect goes to Modesta “Titina” Maselli, a daughter of Rome and citizen of the world.

Museums of Villa Torlonia - Casino dei Principi in Rome from December 12, 2024 to April 21, 2025

You have a work by Titina Maselli and you want to sell it?

Call us at +39 3356585431 or send us a message on WhatsApp at +39 3356585431

YOU CAN TRUST US

The highest valuations, expertise, and reliability

Appraisals, purchases and sale of the works by this artist