"This book was born of gratitude. Art has always shown me the way."
Mario Raniolo was born in Ragusa in 1954, among the white stone of the Hyblaean plateau, the red earth of the fields and a sea that is not water but an abyss of light. He spent his childhood in Bavaria, where a painter opened the door of art to him; he became an engineer in Padua; for years he painted in secret, without telling anyone. Until a friend entered him, without a word, in a painting competition in Ferrara. He won first prize.
In The Colour of Matter, the painter tells where his colours come from: from the lime he mixed as a boy beside his father, a bricklayer; from the Sicilian drawn-thread work his mother made at the loom, an art made not by adding but by taking away; from years of silence and from many journeys, which brought him pigments and earths gathered half the world over. And he salutes the masters who taught him: Piero Guccione, Gerhard Richter, Lucio Fontana, Mark Rothko, Emilio Vedova.
The final section, Paintings Considered, gathers the readings and poems that other people wrote in front of his works, each beside the painting that inspired it, followed by a gallery of works reproduced in colour.
A book about matter painting, about the craft of the hands, and about an idea that runs through all his work: veiling to unveil, bringing to light what matter tries to hide.
136 pages · 17.8 × 25.4 cm · paperback · printed in full colour, with the works reproduced
Published by MArt Srl, 2026
