Painter works
The most famous works of the artist, landscapes and still lifes, portraits of famous people
The Master Benito Malfatti had a fussy, firm and introvert personality, with great humanity and attention to spiritual values; he was strong and weak at the same time.
Since he was a child, he was attracted by drawings and paintings; when he was only 8 he disappeared and his parents looked for him for hours and hours: they found him in front of a shop window admiring colours and canvas in via del Babbuino in Rome: he was enchanted by the beauty of those canvas and dreamt of buying a painting board and all the necessary tools to paint. His parents made big sacrifices to satisfy his desire and he started to express his painting capacities since he was a child.
The war did not stop the strong will to paint of the little Benito Malfatti, the first painting was sold at the price of 10,000 Italian liras: he was only 13, it was 1932.
Year after year he gained personal painting techniques, only a few painters knew how to put them into practice. One of his pupils told that he could create 42 different colour shades with just 6 tubes of paint.
He was a great landscape and portrait painter: with just a few signs you could notice the likeness of a person or a place without being wrong in proportions.
Important poets and influential experts considered him a unique painter with a natural capacity of expressing true scenes in his works.
Thanks to his extraordinary capacities, he had important contacts with famous and well known personages: in fact, his most important works of art were ordered by the Vatican State in Rome and his favourite football team, the A.S.Rome.
His friend who used to have dinner with him in the villa, told that the Master was a true friend because he was spontaneous, he said he could not paint if the paintbrushes did not come into his hands by themselves.. He used to paint his beautiful works in the cellar, his son tells us some stories about his complicated relationship with a father artist, living in his art world.
"He often used me as a model to portray typical Tuscan people like the baker or the farmer; as a prize I could go out with my friends at night.
One day he refused to do a portrait of a child from a noble family because he said he was not pretty enough for a painting.
He made me deliver the fruit back to the greengrocer’s because he said it didn’t have any colour; on the other side the greengrocer kept on saying it was sweet and good….!!"
On day we only had 50,000 liras and we had to go get some food for another difficult week, but he had to finish an important painting for the Pope Karol Woityla and ran out of colours, paintbrushes… guess what he chose to buy…
His faithful Vespa Piaggio was bought in 1969 together with the property: his Vespa and his folding easel were his best adventure mates in the Tuscan landscapes.
His most important works:
- UNO a ERRE (representation melting gold)
- Painting given as a gift to Karol Woityla (Portrait in prayer)
- Altar piece Church of San Biagio in Ciggiano AR
- Altar piece in Pozzo della chiana
- Rome Champion of Italy 1982
- Final: Champions league Rome Liverpool
- Antiquities fair in Arezzo
- The 4 views of Rome
- Portrait AS Rome’s chairman
- Portrait Raffaella Carrà
- Palio di Siena
- Giostra del saracino
- Still life (Le calendole)
- Church of Laterina
- Gift to Banfi , Maria teresa Ruta, Andreotti.
