In the context of Italian art of the second half of the twentieth century, Maria Lai (Ulassai, 1919 – Cardedu, 2013) introduced a conception of the artwork that does not end with the surface, but finds its fulfilment in connection. The years she spent in Arturo Martini’s sculpture class at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts instilled in her a reflection on emptiness, waiting, and the evocative power of form - a lesson she would fully put into practice only decades later. From the 1960s onwards, she in fact almost entirely abandoned painting and withdrew from exhibition activities, devoting herself instead to a practice grounded in humble, everyday materials - wood, bread, thread, and fabric - which would become the distinctive language of her work.
Her return to the art scene coincided with the Telai (Looms), first presented from 1971 onwards, and the Tele cucite (Sewn Canvases), first exhibited in 1975. Her encounter with Mirella Bentivoglio in 1977 marked a decisive turning point and led Maria Lai to the 1978 Venice Biennale, in the historic Materializzazione del linguaggio (Materialization of Language) section. During the same years, the Libri cuciti (Sewn Books) and Geografie (Geographies) took shape: fabric pages traversed by deliberately illegible writing, and celestial maps that correspond to no cartography. Thread thus ceased to be merely a technical element and was transformed into sign, writing, and memory.
Maria Lai’s entire practice develops around an essential core of themes rooted in the most ancient traditions: the repeated gestures of artisanal labour, oral storytelling, myth, stone as a memory of the world’s prehistoric past, and writing as an inexhaustible desire for communication. Her gaze always begins with a remote past and turns towards a universal horizon, towards that infinity that surrounds and calls to the human being. For this very reason, her works often seem to withdraw from the chronicle of the present; yet it is precisely through this distance that they are able to question the present with extraordinary intensity. Each work becomes a metaphor for the mysterious and fragile passage of the human being through life, while each cycle engages in dialogue with the others in a continuous process of osmosis, maintaining a remarkable unity throughout more than sixty years of artistic activity. From paper to canvas, from wood to acrylic, and finally to concrete, Forex, acetate, and steel, the changing materials never diminish the force of the message.
In 1979 the work by Lai La Casa Cucita made in the town of Selargius marks a first opening towards actions in public space. On September 8, 1981, Legarsi alla montagna ties the entire community of Ulassai: Maria Lai, using twenty- seven kilometers of blue ribbon, connects the residences of her village in a deeply collective operation. This work is considered the first example of relational art in Italy, almost two decades before Nicolas Bourriaud's relational aesthetics theory. All of Ulassai's habitants are called to action from the project's first act: from cutting the fabric ribbon distributed from houses to doors, from windows to memories, and, by the work's conclusion, even the surrounding mountain. The artistic ntervention embodies the connection between man, land and a community's heritage, representing the instant in which her reflections became a collective experience of public form. From there Ulassai is shaped into an open-air museum, capable of involving artists such as Constantino Nivola, Luigi Veronesi and Guido Strazza.
During the early 90's, Maria Lai settles herself in Cardedu, where she is to spend her last days.
The interior of the Ulassai's old train station was transformed, in 2006, after the donation of a substantial body of work, into a museum entirely dedicated to preserve the artist's legacy. In 2004 the University of Cagliari awarded her with a laurea honoris causa in Letters, while in 2011 she won the Chamber of Deputies Prize with Orme di leggi.
Her international recognition is consolidated after her passing, with important exhibitions and projects. In 2017 Maria Lai's work is seen at the 57th Venice Biennale, as well as at documenta 14; in 2019, with the occasion of the artist's hundredth birthday, the retrospective Tenendo per mano il sole, at the MAXXI, is dedicated to her; in 2024 the Magazzino Italian Art, in Cold Spring, New York, houses her first personal exhibition in North America; in 2026 il Museo Madre, in Naples, presents Essere è tessere, curated by Mónica Amor and Carlos Basualdo.
Nowadays the artist's works are part of the collections of numerous public institutions: from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to the Pompidou Center of Paris, from the National Modern and Contemporary Gallery (GNAMC) of Rome to the Quadriennale. Lai's work are also present in the collections
of Mart in Rovereto, of the Museo Madre in Naples, of the Civic Museum and the National Pinacoteca of Cagliari, of the MAN in Nuoro, MUSMA in Matera, of the Central National Library of Florence and of the Stazione dell'Arte in Ulassai.