“… the architect-painter Mario Sandonà, distinguished gentleman, a wanderer between Moscow and Paris. There will not be another man who resembles Michelangelo Buonarroti as much as he. It was impressive. Look at the portrait de Chirico drew of him in Paris”, wrote Carlo Belli in 1977, revealing the exceptionality of the figure of Sandonà in the Trentino architectural and artistic scenario of the early 20th century.
Mario Sandonà — among the best students of the School of Otto Wagner in Vienna, which he attends around 1900, then officer of the major artistic imperial institutions, architect and painter who was destined, with the turning point of post-World War I, to remain isolated in his intellectual honesty — represents the attempt of an artistic research which is also a confrontation with an issue of morality and of style.
The abandonment of his career as an architect in the late 1920s, and his paintings are the signs of a critical reflection in the intertwining of Mitteleuropean history throughout the Great War, not only renders the intellectual profoundity and the spiritual intensity of this architect-painter but also a piece of a world destined to lose itself irreparably.
