About Me
Roby Magall (real name: Roberto Fumagalli) began painting in the 1970s, inspired by a Finnish master who, back from one of the latest devastating wars of our century, creates works on polystyrene foam with strange and apparently hallucinating chromatic effects. He is so fascinated by this technique that wants to apply it to his own works.
He then joins a club of Milanese artists in the famous via della Moscova, the artistic heart of the town, participating in various competitions and exhibitions, also winning prestigious prizes such as La Rosa d'Oro (Ced'Art Amici del Quadrato) in the 1978, Natale d'Oro (Int'l Art Gallery), 1st Sever d'Oro (Galleria Sever) in 1980 and Machiavello Academy Award, Florence, in 1981. His works are published in the major art magazine of the time (Essere e Divenire, il Giorno, Arte e Cultura) and in the Bolaffi Catalog.
In the 80s he retires from the art scene to focus on his family, although he keeps on painting for himself, creating his most significant works, some of which can be seen in his website Gallery.
In the years 2000 he is back on the art scene, gaining his spot back in the Milan environment and being awarded important prizes, such as the first place of Rosario Ciatto Award and Il Sever d’Oro in 2012. His works are exhibited for a long period in the Sever Gallery.
He has just recently moved with his family to the beautiful coastline of Spain, where he has found new inspiration and started exporting his artwork over a brand-new artistic panorama in northeast US, Boston.
The style
Roby Magall has always painted exclusively on polystyrene foam, a living material extremely difficult to deal with. His technique is very particular, it can give life to polystyrene the same way a sculptor gives birth to his matter. Then he paints on his modeled material. That's why, rather than painting, he likes to call it "Sculpto-Painting".
Using blowtorch and oxyhydrogen flames the polystyrene base is twisted, the silicone creates figures and metal varnishes give colors and lights. The effect is astonishing and never seen before.
Roby Magall as an artist is essentially self-taught. Over the years his own technique has gradually improved, allowing him to obtain more and more important successes in many artistic events, appearing as a coherent and well-balanced author: all his works follow the same pictorial line and obey the same constructive and compositional rules.
The topic dealt with is profound and focuses on the theme of mankind and the very meaning of its existence. Fascinating nature-like images populates his works, hand in hand with symbolism that often recollects to the origin of life, or to the universe and its matter, or to the future and the endless flow of time, somehow bonded into marine-life collections, images of freedom, angels and ghosts