Massimo Scolari used images to manipulate form without using Renaissance or neoclassical styles. His drawings are pure fantasy and often defy explanation. In Urban Passage, geometric forms resembling a house seem to be projected onto a mythical landscape by the sky. In Addio Melampo, these forms emanate from the earth itself. Its title refers both to the name of a dog in an Italian novel and to a mythical Greek man who can see the future and understand the voices of animals, although for Scolari there is not necessarily a connection between the title and the image of a drawing. Addio Melampo is clearly a drawing born from imagination.
Publication excerpt from an essay by Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo, in Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 125.
