“Insights” by Marta Biagini constitute an opening onto a different world—not one opposed to reality, but a world that coexists within it. It is a more subjective gaze toward another, ontological dimension of the natural world, with which we maintain a peculiar relationship in terms of understanding and familiarizing ourselves with cosmic elements and the surrounding environment. Insight is defined as the mental ability to perceive images beyond the capacities of normal vision. It concerns a subconscious process, directly connected to experience and belonging to a secondary nature of the human being, projecting knowledge produced by means distant from the senses and rational thought. Perception through experience relates to factors that exert direct influence and are shaped both by subjective beliefs and by the broader cultural background. The artist activates this perceptual process and presents thirty-one paintings in which a distinction is achieved between the subjective and objective elements of experiential space. Her work is divided into two categories. The first concerns the subjective self, and her approach to morphological elements leans toward Surrealism. The second, drawing inspiration from the objective world, presents recognizable forms within a gentler poetic framework that reveals the paradox of the two worlds. In the purely surrealist works, the canvas is flooded with abstract, biomorphic shapes floating in space. These otherworldly landscapes do not obey Euclidean geometry; rather, through their shadows and contours they suggest three-dimensional space, thus depicting a different reality. Chromatic organisms, creations of the subconscious, drift and develop within the hallucinatory regions of the mind, where time is visibly absent. Past and future merge into a vast present. The drawing is strict, and the forms it shapes appear closed, lending a sense of stability. Color is applied smoothly and uniformly, without visible traces or textures, promoting the wholeness that characterizes this subjective universe. In the second category are works in which representational elements still relate—albeit fragmentarily—to objective reality. The colors are softer, and the forms are no longer confined in relation to their surroundings. This second world unfolds more proportionally and dynamically. Space here is defined by architectural structures, objects, and plants, which condense meaning within each composition. Faces and bodies are integrated into abstract constructions that complete the dreamlike world. The connection between forms is ambiguous, suggesting a structural relationship that at first glance appears irrational. Realistic elements do not function as information within a specific narrative but as fragments, each carrying its own meaning and contributing to a whole from which the painter’s pure expression emerges. The function of the art of “insights” is not aimed at knowledge, nor at anything practical. Its goal is to reveal the conflict between instinct and emotional logic in favor of expression. The two different perspectives on the same inner world foreground the contradiction between the conscious and the unconscious. The order and strict clarity enjoyed by the forms of the abstract, surrealist works contrast with the fluidity and osmosis prevailing in compositions that maintain contact with elements of reality. Thus, the artist stands against established knowledge regarding the supposed freedom of the unconscious and the recognizable order attributed to consciousness and reason. The artist organizes a different structure of her pictorial world, where ambiguity dominates the relationships between its parts, and existence itself appears doubtful—though not rejected. Nothing functions in sequence; instead, everything harmonizes according to a different worldview that places emotion in the foreground, filtered through human experience and translating morphology into a subjectively expressive process. The body of work as a whole radiates an inner force that makes this different mode of existence perceptible—an existence that takes shape through color and potential forms. Through her “Insights,” Biagini develops a rhetoric concerning the contemplation of human interiority and the perception of the external environment, seeking and communicating a space that is more essential and authentic.

Observing Marta’s artistic journey, one notes a path that moves from an anxious painterly quest through her inner world and her social concerns. Works mainly of faces and expressions, rendered with accomplished figurative execution. Is that enough to make art? Technical mastery alone is not sufficient and may even distract from art itself. Yet when she succeeds in expressing her innermost being, in the *Spazi della Mente* (Spaces of the Mind), then yes—it is art. She gives form to the inexpressible while conveying the anxiety of a person about what is happening around her and within her. She realizes she needs more in order to express her anguish. Thus comes the union of her works with the Renaissance and with Mythology—the seedbed of the metaphysical and the transcendent. Her Medea: a work intensely plastic yet fierce, as the myth demands. A tragic work of wild beauty. At the same time, the well of hope—as my own ignorance perceives it—with its wreath of pebbles. An imaginary sensation, open to each viewer’s interpretation. Her course continues with works of strong plasticity and vibrant use of color—music in paint. Canvases of metaphysical tone, of spontaneous symbolism that suggest and uplift. Here the surreal and the metaphysical coincide. Perhaps this always happens, though it is rarely expressed in such a modern way. There is also a beauty that captivates at first glance; and as one continues to observe, it leads to paths, thoughts, and reflections that the creator, willingly or not, invites us to trace. One imagines something that may exist—or may not. Yet even if it does not, Marta’s art is filled with anguish, restlessness, poetry. A visual poetry, free and unconstrained in imagination, which at the same time—paradoxical as it may seem—does not leave the Pegasus of her painting uncontrolled. The journey continues within the spaces of the mind, among labyrinths and hopes. Lighthouses and lighthouse-like structures—exploratory (if one may say so) and restless—push thought toward imagining a modern Babel. All-seeing lighthouses, researchers, revealing unexplored paths hidden in the depths of the mind. Where do they lead? Do they wish to lead? Perhaps they lead inward—“dig within.” And one cannot ignore the elegant birds which, for me, travel, search for the beyond, depart from Reason. Competing with the birds’ flight is a high-flying kite—an escapee from the rooms of the mind—on a journey of hope? Of the future? After all, Marta’s works are neither logic nor science. They are art. Works of art that, as they are worked over time, acquire colors and combinations of colors, and a geometry of forms that may unconsciously originate from her architectural past; yet to me they evoke (in spirit) Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte. I do not speak of comparisons in artistic stature, but of the way talented artists learn from and assimilate the teaching and works of significant masters. Marta’s art surprises and delights. It is not mere aestheticism; it expresses her inner world through the tools of painting. Art moves forward. Move forward, Marta (we await what comes next). All of the above are personal views. *De profundis*, not artistically substantiated—I do not possess the corresponding academic foundation. Yet this does not prevent me from expressing what I feel and what I receive from the works of my beloved friend.

“All-color places, born from the caress of imagination and the memory of realism, compose the painterly world of Marta Biagini. Under the title ‘Spaces of the Mind,’ the exhibition primarily brings to mind a sense of poetic sensitivity expressed not with words, but with brush, techniques, and the materials of painting.** Marta, an architect for many years and a painter since childhood, succeeds in harmoniously uniting in her works her two great loves: Architecture, with its strict rules, and the freedom of artistic creation. In a warm, metaphysical embrace—rendered in a surrealistic manner and full of movement—the spaces of the mind, with their buildings as points of reference, open their doors to whirlwinds of thought and boundless journeys. Hidden within these architectural structures lies a seductive magic. One might say they resemble hideaways that invite you to visit and wander within, around, and beyond them. To walk upon their rhythmic tiles. To pass through their stairways and open passages. To search for what lies behind their small and large symbols. Somewhere there is stone and whimsical flowers. And there is also sun and a blue sea at dusk. It is true that symbolism abounds throughout Biagini’s body of work, and the architectural constructions themselves carry symbolic meaning. At times they evoke Greek island complexes or ancient palaces. At others, tall cylindrical aristocratic towers of a bygone era. Neighborhoods or conical fortresses. Elements of nature accompany them—skies, trees, birds. And in all of these, the human being is absent. Human figures appear in a second group of works presented in the exhibition. These are portraits placed within architectural environments—sometimes more clearly defined (rooms, interior spaces), and at other times set against abstract backgrounds composed of various geometric motifs. The faces are rendered according to a personal visual language, with their realism subtly distorted. The dominant feature in all the figures is their expression and, above all, their gaze. With moist eyes and serious expressions, they look at the viewer or elsewhere—somewhere high above. Silent, immersed within themselves, they seem to be envisioning something, or as if wishing to escape from their present into the realm of their dreams.”

Marta Biagini does not merely possess a fertile morphoplastic imagination through which she releases expressive possibilities of the subconscious. Through the automatic surrealist writing she employs, she decodes stimuli and sensations received from her surrounding environment, from social interactions and impressions, from memory traces and archetypal conditions, shaping labyrinthine visual fields.** Her artistic inquiry focuses on the reconstitution of a reality that originates from the very roots of writing itself—as a mode of pathways, varied imprints, and the sequential course of the line. A line which, through its spirals and returns, its densities and rarefactions, its rhythmic formations and oscillations, creates networks through which the established connects with the unestablished, the visible with the presumed, the enigmatic with the paradoxical. The “landscapes” revealed by Marta Biagini’s abstract and gestural script resemble lace-like screens that unify and simultaneously separate “being” from “seeming” within a fluid and active succession of states. If the existential self-signification of writing itself defines the transformations and metamorphoses of the “I,” this first-person singular in the painter’s works acquires the multiplicity and plural dimension of “we,” as an awareness of a dramaturgy of multifaceted events concerning both the evident and the unseen—a past that becomes present, yet without being confined to immobilizing definitions. The viewer is drawn in and at the same time unconsciously interwoven within the labyrinths of the script, which above and beyond all else define the qualities, texture, intensities, and tonalities of space itself. A space that deconstructs and restructures, transforms and constantly overturns the probabilities of securing logic. The position of this multidimensional space is occupied by topological networks that at times color and at others decolor with semitones the various expansions of their segments, which not only converse with one another but also render an organic continuity to the whole, activating in the viewer the function of association. In Marta Biagini’s works, space is identified with time and light, as micro-scales correspond to macro-scales of “events” that transcend the self-sufficiency of the “I.” Each visual field equates to both the positive and the negative of its presence, as though the viewer were communicating simultaneously with the positive and the negative of a photograph. For what is at stake in this particular body of work is not merely the revelation of the transformations of an “image,” but the synergies that indicate morphogenesis itself—through space, time, and luminosity—of a visual field that, like a screen, vibrates with life, contracts and unfolds, expands and compresses, bringing to the foreground the concept and dynamic of graphic expression. Through the layering of networks and their rotational movement, their simplicity and transformability, their complexity and trace-making, the body of writing—like a multicellular organism—becomes the body of a material that reconstructs and reconstitutes itself, seeking the authenticity and verisimilitude of its suspended presence.

Looking at the works of this artist, I feel the unconscious emerging as it does during dreams. A dreamlike phase which, when it ends, allows us to connect free words, thoughts, and images without limitations. This is Biagini’s true surrealism: it begins from a single point and then gradually builds around it a form of writing, following inexhaustible paths.** In her works we observe a strong imaginative capacity, as she guides the deeper self toward a cognitive state beyond reality—where wakefulness and dream are both present and harmoniously reconciled with one another. At the same time, through clear and realistic images, the artist develops forms that are not always decipherable, yet are wisely interconnected, giving life to enigmatic figures that stir emotions and evoke deep feeling. Marta’s mode of expression suggests an analytical awareness of the surrounding world and of those who are part of it. Everything unfolds through gazes and behaviors intensely imbued with meaning. In her imaginative images, chromatic nuances and shapes give the work its dominant value. The young refugees look at us, expressing a primordial pain that questions, that judges, and that gently condemns our indifference—without oppressing us. Instead, it leads us to continually question ourselves and to undertake an ongoing reexamination of our conscience. The works are beautiful and full of meaning—to look at, to reflect upon, and to hold within one’s heart

Carl Jung’s *The Red Book* is a description of the author’s inner experiences—a kind of psychological biography. The book is illustrated with numerous drawings made by Jung himself, which he considered an externalization of his experiences. They represented the expression of the “objective psyche,” that is, the expression of elements common to all people.** We know that artists live with obsessions. They repeat—again and again—images, symbols, and situations that carry particular significance for them. Monomania is their defining characteristic. Marta Biagini does the same. In her previous exhibition focused on hats, the true artistic aim was the visual expression of the symbols carried by the figures on their hats. Each figure referred to an image, a stereotype, or an archetypal symbol. In her current exhibition, she continues this exploration. Her watercolors and oil paintings on this theme play with elements of memory. Her technique resembles the automatic writing of the Surrealists or the corresponding approach of Cocteau. The drawing begins from a random point. Gradually, forms emerge that lead to archetypal elements of memory—such as towers, windows, and staircases. Of course, the process can also work in reverse: starting with a symbolic element and then allowing improvisation to follow. In both cases, the goal is the same: to visually reveal the inheritance of memory that is shared by all of us and exists within us. This process corresponds to the two levels of memory the artist engages with. On one level, there is a momentary memory tied to a particular form—your drawing differs if you are calm versus if you are angry or sad. This is a kind of immediate memory, a response to the direct stimuli of the environment and the senses. It corresponds to improvisation, which varies from one work to another depending on the artist’s emotional state. On another level, there is enduring memory, which helps express the archetypes the artist seeks to articulate. Here, she embraces the classical meaning of art as the free play of imagination—effortless and spontaneous. Whatever the imagination does not forget is validated as possible. The asymmetry between reality and imagination is not resolved logically but mediated through the power of the imaginary. Her drawings explore all infinite possibilities between the general and the particular, between thought and imagination, following criteria that are not predefined but shift like a playful game. Biagini focuses on the concept of the whole and on composition—principles borrowed from architecture. When she paints a tower, she is not concerned only with presenting a symbol, but with how it integrates with improvisational elements into a cohesive whole. The form must be total. A work of art is not merely a collection of parts—it is something greater than its parts. The pursuit of the overall image, the gestalt, is her objective

Many artists associated with the Surrealists used the hat as a subject in their work. Marta Biagini belongs to this tradition. In her work, the faces wearing hats are depicted without particular expressiveness. They do not differ from one work to another. The expression of the figure itself is not important. What matters are the symbols they carry on their hats. Each figure refers to an image, a stereotype, or a situation. Biagini does not create full-body figures. The work begins with the depiction of the head. Her pieces resemble curious police ID photographs, in which the faces are presented with limited and subtle expression—until you raise your gaze slightly higher and see the hidden world they carry. Her symbols include charm and vanity, motherhood, the sense of freedom; suspended but also clearly articulated psychoanalytic symbols expressing repression, confinement, sorrow, disillusionment, and existential deadlock. Other symbols include protectiveness, tenderness, imagination and eroticism, urban landscapes and nature, escape and the feeling of freedom, or simply daydreaming. The list could go on endlessly. The subject becomes a fertile tool without ever turning into a cliché. For in Marta Biagini’s work, the hat is itself an expression of the human condition.

Each exhibition by Marta Biagini is a surprise. Combining the patience and sensitivity of an archaeologist with the inner wisdom of a psychoanalyst, she brings to light raw material from the depths of her soul and dares to reveal it before our astonished eyes. It is a painstaking process. For those fortunate enough, as I was, to know her personally, this struggle—the anxiety of self-exploration—is etched on her face. For those less fortunate, it is enough to look at her works, which reflect this struggle. And I do not speak only of the often imperceptible tensions in the expressions of her figures. Equally eloquent is the silence of the archetypal forms surrounding them—unreal, illogical shapes. But how else can one give form to the invisible, the ineffable? Her colors—earth-toned—are in harmony with the shapes and their expressive weight. A small color revolution occurs in her latest works featuring children. Perhaps inevitably, the colors of the child’s psyche are brighter and more optimistic. In a time like ours, when Arthur Danto speaks of the end of art and anything proposed as art is considered art, Marta Biagini’s painting shines with its honesty, courage, sensitivity, and painterly quality. I leave, once again, enchanted by her exhibition.

Marta Biagini’s new work explores the landscape. The pieces are inspired by the land of Konitsa, offering a beautiful, carefree, and idealized vision that soothes the soul for a moment and transports us mentally to an idyllic, almost therapeutic world. They reflect the timeless connection between humans and nature, the environment, the source and foundation of human life. This inseparable part of material reality is where growth occurs through solidarity. The concept of “Mother Earth,” of feminine nature and power, is examined primarily through the archetype of the “Great Mother” (according to Jung). A universal, innate psychic pattern present in the collective unconscious of all humans, with its dual nature. Mother Earth represents the source of life, the nurturer, and the refuge. She is connected to fertility and growth: just as the earth gives life to plants, the mother provides nourishment and support. She embodies selfless love and care. She expresses comfort, safety, and unconditional acceptance. She conveys instinctive wisdom beyond rationality, transformation, and regeneration, as the cycle of nature (birth, death, rebirth) mirrors the potential for psychic transformation. At the same time, the dark, frightening side of the archetype is also acknowledged, and it is equally important. Earth as a place of death and decay ultimately reclaims what it has given life to. The individual’s relationship with “Mother Earth” often reflects their primary relationship with their personal mother and, by extension, their relationship with the world. Returning to the archetypal layers of “Mother Earth” allows reconnection with therapeutic feminine forces and the development of a more authentic self. It is a profound psychic symbol that embodies humanity’s fundamental experiences of life, care, death, and connection to the totality of existence. Through these ideas, and always following gradual changes, Marta Biagini observes and captures all that evolves around her: the “non-demanding” stimuli of nature and the spaces of “non-hierarchy” that allow us to rest. Colors from shrubs, leaves, and branches, flowers and fir trees. Hours of quiet and solitude, contact, and reflection. A boundless space that makes us feel like “at home in the world.”