Marco Stancati on the occasion of the show at the Fortezza di Sorano:
​
Meeting Malgosia Levittoux ( Margherita to her Italian friends) is like meeting an art medium , capable of connecting you with the beauty that surrounds us and that too often distracts us. It happened to me. And that friendship has never stopped. It all began in the Tuscia area of Viterbo.
A few years ago, in Bolsena
Summer
I cycle past a municipal exhibition space and catch a glimpse of some evocative images. I ride another hundred meters or so, then turn back. I get off my bike and go inside.
Some are images of Lake Bolsena: intense watercolors that tend to encapsulate the entire lake in an emotion that is at times iridescent, sunny, or sullen, but always with a hint of magic and mystery.
Then there are the oil paintings: sometimes bright colors of a lush and triumphant land, sometimes more mellow, intense, and compact, in landscapes of a severe, mountainous charm. And also portraits of a Nordic Expressionism softened by compassion, in the literal sense : an intense and supportive participation. And scattered woodcuts, in black and white, which canons hark back to Die Brücke.
No, it's definitely not the exhibition of a dedicated local painter, as one often sees in municipal galleries in the summer. It's the work of a true artist: a blond woman with clear eyes, dressed in the same greens as the paintings, and smelling of earth, herbs, and vegetables. She can only be the artist; she is that painting. She is Margherita Levittoux. We introduce ourselves; I have little time for pleasantries because I'm leaving. I overwhelm her with my enthusiasm for what I've seen, telling her to leave aside "that mountainous landscape" (of the Pyrenees) and "that watercolor" (of Lake Bolsena); "I'll come pick them up in a month." I exchange contact details with Margherita, not sure whether she's happier or more perplexed by this singular, sudden encounter. And I leave, for I'm culpably late.
A few days ago, in Sorano.
Italy has many places of great beauty. Some are even enchanting, in the sense that you feel a sort of metaphysical suspension. The Orsini Fortress in Sorano is one of them. When you cross it and head towards the terrace, where a small charming hotel (Hotel della Fortezza) nestles, a glimpse of Sorano from above unfolds: a rock village immersed in greenery.
In this enveloping and generous natural setting, Margherita is exhibiting a retrospective of her work (in the upper section of the Fortezza) until October 2nd . The show concentrates on paintings created in Italy, because this wandering Polish woman of French origins (as her surname suggests), after passing through London, Paris, and a long sojourn in the French Pyrenees, decides to come to Italy to understand what lies between Florence and Rome. And, upon arriving in the Etruscan region, the light that envelops her and the atmosphere she "feels" excites her, indeed, eroticizes her to such an extent that she decides to settle down and put down roots: in the comune of Acquapendente, in località Falconero Here and in the surrounding area, the paintings that give the exhibition its name, "Paintings from Falconero," will be born .
Painting must be cultivated. Literally,
"If you have a garden next to your library, you lack nothing," said Cicero. Margherita is an extraordinary gardener and has what it takes to paint: she lacks nothing, to paraphrase Marcus Tullius. She lacks nothing to act as a medium between us and the nature she paints, between us and those human landscapes she brings to canvas , revealing them to us: how much lived life there is in this woman's unreserved face, how much erotic tenderness in these rocky yet tender lovers.
Her canvases are full of energy: overflowing and sunny with radiant yellows, or internal and restless with visceral greens. Her paintings are constructed with simple elements that then delve deeply. She draws inspiration from the everyday life of the vegetable patch, from the harmony of the floweri garden, from a chance encounter, from the contrasts of light and shadow, from the magic of the landscape of Lake Mezzano, which renders every element (water, sky, earth) light, to convey to us the wonder of life around us and encourage us to practice reflection, now neglected.
In this, Margherita reminds me of her great compatriot: the poet Wislawa Szymborska, who, starting from even the most trivial everyday occurrences, inspires a different perspective, broadens horizons, and surprises with unexpected new insights. Just as Szymborska's poems offer deeper interpretative keys with each rereading, Levittoux's paintings surprise with a previously overlooked perspective, with a detail that wasn't, with the cry or whisper of a color previously overshadowed by other inspirations.
Occasionally, her painting seems to become more liquid, then almost evaporate, evolving toward some form of abstraction in which the figurative begins to blur; but then, bold, almost aggressive strokes of color still testify to the need for expression, happily contaminated by Mediterranean light.
​
The unattractive-looking link below works; and it takes you to the original article in Italian
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​