Goodbye to Pino Mainieri, the painter of the soul who marked Paola

Pino Mainieri left us on his birthday. He leaves to the city of Paola a legacy not only of art but also and above all of values. He was 75 years old and had always been a dreamer, one of those men who look at people’s eyes as if they could see centuries of life inside them. He immediately understood the people in front of him as he had already known them in a parallel dimension. He believed in reincarnation, that is, that after death the soul or consciousness does not disappear but is reborn in a new body. The anthropologist Mauro Minervino described him as a painter of the soul and mind. “A precious painter. In front of his works one always remains questioned and amazed, brought back to a remote state of vision as if in front of the timeless mystery that is hidden in a sacred icon. Mainieri is a shaman painter; his brush is intent on a very fine technique and cultivated by a religious and sapiential depth. His painting is nourished by visions, and his visions have the additional power of the archetypes of the unconscious and the initiatory charm of divination. It manifests itself there the gift of inscrutability and unveiling that approaches the inviolability of the sacred. Each object and image is a sign of an enigmatic chime, captures the doubling and of an incipient metamorphosis. The detail becomes architecture, the architecture becomes body, the female body becomes fruit, nourishment, landscape, the landscape is transformed into an idea, in a spiral of infinite references from often humble and modest constructs, it often becomes disturbing and abysmal, chasing the signs of a metamorphosis making them docile to the pictorial dowsing of his brush and his visionary and dreamlike style. Those who observe his compositions have the privilege of coming into contact with the mystery hidden in objects and bodies”.