Volf Roitman (born 30 December 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay; died 25 April 2010) was a painter, sculptor and architect, sometimes referred to as a Renaissance Man, the son of Russian/Romanian parents.
He grew up in Argentina where he received a degree in architecture whilst co-editing a cult poetry magazine. At age twenty, he moved to Paris where, with Carmelo Arden Quin, founder of the Latin American movement fr:MADI (Art), instantly morphed into a painter while helping to relaunch MADI, first in France and eventually across four continents. Moving between countries and cultures – he has lived in Spain, the U.K., Ireland, and finally outside of Tampa, Florida – and although eventually distanced from the MADI movement’s official conservative views, he remained always faithful to its concepts of ludic invention and whimsical humor within the boundaries of colorful geometric abstraction.
"Roitman is considered one of the great MADI creators. His disposition for aesthetic playfulness illustrates the very essence of the movement. Forms, colors, invention and imagination blend in a superabundance that alerts us to the existence of exceptional creation… …His sculptures - lamps, torches of the imagination – serve to corroborate the sense of liberty that runs through all of MADI creation "... Most recently, Roitman started to produce large transformable wall hangings called MADI Banners on silk and metal, some of which are applied on transparent surfaces glowing as stained glass windows. He has also taken his work to new dimensions by covering ordinary buildings, such as the Wood Building in Marshall, Texas and the MADI Museum in Dallas, with his vividly colored, three-dimensional panels, thus creating giant MADI “sculpture” pieces . Of the latter building, LA Weekly critic Peter Frank wrote, “The building … marks a landmark in recent history of art … Not since the Museum of non-Objective Art in New York morphed into the Guggenheim Museum more than half a century ago has there been anything like this in North America.”
MADI has proved itself to be the longest-running, continuously active art movement in the world. The entity which Arden Quin and Roitman formed in 1951 eventually evolved into MADI International, that today comprises some sixty artists working on four continents.
Read more about Volf Roitman: Early Years, The Var – Barcelona – 1979–1998, Between Florida and West Cork (1998- ), Return To Visual Arts