Bona de Mandiargues (born Tibertelli), niece and pupil of Filippo de Pisis, accompanied him to Paris in 1947. There she embraced Surrealism and delved into magic, dreams, sexuality, and the occult. She experimented throughout her life with textile assemblages and abstract and figurative painting. Toro nuziale (1958), a pivotal early textile assemblage in Bona’s oeuvre, integrates shreds from a man’s suit with an essential palette of reds, greys, browns, and whites. De Mandiargues creates a symmetrical, three-dimensional composition, invoking the symbol revered by the Surrealists: the bull’s head. However, by subtly suggesting a Dionysian dismembering of the male body through a metonymic figure of speech (wherein the suit substitutes for the man) and through the artwork’s title referencing the ritual bull sacrifice made in medieval Spanish weddings, de Mandiargues subverts the virile imagery typically associated with the bull. She presents instead a domesticated, submissive creature, yielding to the woman-artist’s will. In 1962, the artwork appeared on the catalogue cover of de Mandiargues’s solo exhibition at Arturo Schwarz in Milan, showcasing its enduring significance for the artist.
This is the first time the work of Bona de Mandiargues is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Antonella Camarda
