Mimma Umeton

1968 ROME - Piazza Navona.

Mimma Umeton, daughter of Luigi Bertani, a native of Lucca, and Elisa Umeton of Novi Ligure, is born in 1949 in Lucca, where she attends the local institute of art. In order to experience different artistic realities, she moves to Rome. At the Academy of Fine Arts she makes the acquaintance of a French sculpture who has adopted the City as his home, Pier Gabriele Vangelli, creator of the splendid bronze bust of Bartolomeo Pinelli, ‘Trastevere's painter' (found on the façade of the old City Hall, on the Viale Trastevere). True to her Tuscan origins, she shares the sculptor's fondness for visiting and sketching the taverns where artists meet. In the course of her apprenticeship, she learns to use oil pastels, a technique favoured by the Impressionists, and especially by the painter Edgar Degas, “the Magnificent”.

1973 ROME - Piazza del Pantheon.

Just a stone's throw from “Armando's”, an old-fashioned tavern facing onto the piazza, between the Church of St. Louis of the French (Caravaggio: St. Matthew and the Angel, the Martyrdom of St. Matthew and the Vocation of St. Matthew) and the venerable French bookstore, ‘there was a betting room'. Once the races were over, the horseplayers were fond of going, to the tavern to ‘drink down a half-litre of wine and a spritzer'. The artist's studio was nearby, and so she would drop by Armando's, accompanied by her diminutive dog Leonardo, to talk awhile and, fascinated by the atmosphere, draw the patrons in the midst of their judgments, disagreements, doubts and heated arguments, all of which gradually gave rise to a passion …“I feel my heart stolen away”. (Francesco Petrarch). It was a short-lived period. Times were difficult in Italy, a country rocked by tensions, rebellion and protests, not to mention arms and drugs. In the end, no one came out unscathed. A long, dark, difficult period began for the painter, with the ‘Dots', as the historians will tell you, representing the side-effect. As time passed, almost all the taverns closed, one by one. But Armando's, with no little effort, managed to resist, to the artist's great relief. It was a passing of the guard from one generation to the next.

1983 ROME - Piazza di Spagna.

The artist had moved to a home on the Via della Croce, where the beginning of the end got underway. She was taken to the “A. Gemelli” Hospital for an overdose. She was treated by kind, understanding Dr. Enrico Tempesta. She continued with her psychoanalysis, guided every step of the way by Dr. Ignazio Majore. She began the daunting rehabilitation that she doggedly continued for days, months and years. Chekhov held that, to begin living once again in the present, you must first make amends with the past, ‘and this can only be achieved through constant effort.

1993 ROME - Monte Mario.

These were years of inner exploration, during which her faith in God played a major role, allowing her to focus renewed energy on the construction of a couple, with marriage resolving the former fragmentation. She was wed to her companion with the passion for astrology.

2003 ROME - Monteverde.

With the coming of a new era, a star was born: Varenne (1.09.1, New York, Breeders Crown, 2001), setting off a burst of ‘joie de vivre' that led the artist back to the betting parlour: “Without fear of saying so, there I go”. (Dante Alighieri). At present, the painter is toiling in her studio, surrounded by images that tell of the betting parlours of today, as well as those of yesteryear. She works. And in working, she expresses the multitude of people who share her vision, fixing the image of the finish line!

Mimma Umeton animated drawings stem from the observation and perception of people in social gatherings.