Michelagnolo, 1984

Mino Trafeli  

Mino Trafeli (Volterra, December 29, 1922 - Volterra, August 9, 2018) was an Italian sculptor and partisan.  Fundamental to his education is the art institute in Florence, Magisterium section, not only because here he meets notable teachers (Paronchi, one of the most interesting personalities of the Italian literary panorama, is his professor of Italian literature), but  because he enters in contact with a lively and "moving" city. 

In 1944, Trafeli, thanks to a friend who had put him in contact with the clandestine movement, actively participates in the resistance in the Galluzzo area, Florence. After the war, he maintained his  membership in the Pd'A, to then merge, with the left of his party, for a short time, in the PSI within which he maintained his autonomy of libertarian imprint, contributing (as a political militant of basis, as he likes to say) as a provincial municipal councilor, to  fundamental projects for the life of Volterra. 

During his socialist political activity (1956-1957) he agreed to be an illustrator with satirical cartoons for the ancient Florentine socialist newspaper "La Difesa" then led by Lelio Lagorio, future minister of the Republic.  The choice to live in his hometown did not prevent him from contacting the most significant centers of contemporary art and culture, especially Milan where he is linked to the Fumagalli Galleria delle Ore. Precious is his intellectual presence in the sixties not only  for research and for creative projects, but also for his political vision which leads him to understand the phenomenon of youth protest of which he becomes a critical interlocutor. As Enrico Crispolti writes, "the provocation of behavior that Trafeli comes to  suggest in his recent sculptures (those of the sixties, ed.) is therefore of a critical and problematic order. In this sense he understands a duty of generation, of his generation (that appeared precisely after the war), as a specific response in the current debate". Often the sculptor from Volterra, just like Pietro Gobetti, speaks of political culture. The sensitivity of the creative towards the problems of his time (not only in a relative sense) is always present even when one speaks implicitly of the human condition.  Without expressing that concept of the death of art of which Hegel speaks. From 1942 he taught at the art institute of Volterra.  He exhibits at the Galleria delle Ore di Fumagalli in Milan, the Galleria Schneider in Rome, the Galleria Antidogma in Turin at the Venice Art Biennale, the Carrara Sculpture Biennale and the Rome Quadrennial of Art.