MILVIO SODI

Biographical notes Milvio Sodi was born in Pisa on 19 October 1938. He lived there for thirty years and attended the studio of the sculptor Mario Bertini who taught him the basics of drawing and, in later times, modelling.

In 1967 he moved his residence to Florence; where his interest in painting grew and for some years he followed the academic teaching courses on color held by the painter Sirio Salimbeni. From that time he met and frequented many people and environments in the artistic world and, through study and experience in different techniques, he worked in the field of figurative arts, soon moving towards a naturalistic expressiveness of introspective content.

His pictorial work proceeded in cycles: from the initial Flights of Seagulls (memory of his youthful passion for the world linked to the liquid element) resulting in the Sea Tale, the autobiography of a drama; to the pollution narrated in the Story of the Marsh in the mid-seventies, with foresight in the search for indelayable balances; from the Scogli di Gallura to the Sea Waves and the Moments. Then a return to the Structures, resulting from the investigation of the shapes that light and shadows create in the masses of rock, within which Metamorphoses appeared, with feminine figures emerging from the boulder; and then Mythographies, inspired by the classic Ovidian readings, with sleeping Oreads, Sirens, Veiled Ones; up to Perceptions, an anthology of those rocks that water and wind have shaped into bodies and from which the title of his first monographic volume was born in 1997.

From time to time floral elements have timidly appeared in the paintings: above all Irises, the beloved irises symbol of Florence, and floating Orchids, which later actually flew to the tropical island of Réunion; until the next flowerings.

Since 2007, the works have continued with other cycles: In dream forms, where the painted masses have been enriched with new colours; and Inner Landscape, a more thoughtful introspective investigation.

Since 1991, the “Gruppo Donatello” Cultural Association of Florence has counted him among its effective members for twenty years and then among the members of the Board of Directors.

In 2023 the Florence - Europe Cultural Center “Mario Conti” co-opted him into the Visual Arts Jury of the Florence Prize.