On a wall in Via dei Pisoni, in the heart of the historic Roman district of Quadraro, an unprecedented Hulk in a newborn version appeared in the autumn of 2013, rendered with skilful brushstrokes of metallic green and flanked by a Mickey Mouse wearing a gas mask. The artist was Ron English (Dallas, 1966), one of the fathers of Pop Surrealism, an iconic figure who emerged on the US underground scene, a painter and street artist who has always been fond of the languages of pop, cinema, comics and advertising. And if his little Hulk was a monstrous metaphor for economic and political power, a portrait of an overbearing system and an immature democracy, Mickey Mouse became the emblem of American pop culture, in which naivety and terror, fairytale narration and environmental devastation intersect relentlessly.
It was one of the many walls that blossomed in Quadraro, thanks to the efforts of the M.U.Ro. association, led by the artist David Vecchiato and now active for ten years throughout the city, with international projects linked to the world of muralism and street art.
On that occasion, another work saw the light, again in Via dei Pisoni, on a neighbouring wall: it was signed by the young Californian Beau Stanton, born in 1985, who arrived in the capital as an assistant to Ron English, but with his own career already underway and an immediately recognisable style. He gave Quadraro the image of a tree, which blossomed from the shadow of a menacing skull amidst precious decorations: the law of life triumphed over death, remembering and celebrating the story of a neighbourhood that was able to be reborn – thanks in part to the dream of Cinecittà – after the bombings of 1944 and the Nazi-Fascist round-ups.
Today, Beau Stanton, with his dizzying pictorial sets, has returned to Rome, again at the invitation of M.U.Ro. This time, his energies are focused on a mural inside the Mercato Menofilo in Quarto Miglio: a project supported by the American Embassy in Rome, under the patronage of the Municipality of Rome VII. The work will be presented at the MACRO, during the first edition of the MURo Festival, on Saturday 18 May 2019 (11:00 am), but some preview details will be unveiled on Monday 15 April (12:00 pm), in the Great Hall of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
The meeting, open to the public, coordinated by Professor Giuseppe Di Lorenzo, will give space and voice to the artist and to David Vecchiato: a way to learn more about the generous, constant cultural activity carried out by M.U.Ro in Rome, between the suburbs and historic districts, and to discover which symbols, suggestions, influences and inspirations nourish Stanton’s imagination, in the intertwining of classical iconography and graphic experimentation, between apocalyptic atmospheres and Victorian aesthetics, between references to traditional figurative oil painting, to minute Art Nouveau decoration and to a mythological-Lysergic romanticism. Continuous crossovers from history to the present day, for a very personal synthesis of pop, industrial, acid surrealism and visionary restlessness.
– Helga Marsala