Uno, la Mela

Screen printing depicting the archetype of the apple.

The Nature series was born from the search to transform an image into a symbol through a programmed reduction that tends to eliminate the superfluous in favor of meaning, with a view to creating art multiples. From 1961 to 1976 Mari draws 17 symbols produced with silk-screen printing on texiline. Mari begins to work on the subjects that make up this series since 1957: in that year he conceives the first version of the Gioco Delle Favole, which Danese would have put into production in 1965. Almost become a symbol of Danese production, this series is among the few examples of editions that achieve the goal of creating 'artistic' images for the living environment based on the concept of seriality. There are no originals of these works, because the final image is obtained only through technical reproduction procedures (screen printing). Mari seems to seek through the choice of these 'archetypal' subjects, the form and technique of their representation a sort of 'super -icon ': the Apple is not an apple but the Apple.