Maria Lai — Senza Titolo (Uovo), 1978

Realised in 1978, Senza Titolo (Uovo) belongs to one of the most significant phases of Maria Lai’s research: the years in which she moved decisively away from traditional media to develop the thread-based language that became the signature of her career and one of the most original contributions to Italian contemporary art.

The composition turns on the form of the egg, one of the oldest and most universal symbols in human history. For Lai the egg stood not only for birth but for the mystery of origin, for possibility and for the suspended time that precedes transformation — an essential image that holds within it the cycle of life, memory and creation. Working with thread, the artist does not simply draw a figure: she builds a form of visual writing, stitching across the fabric in a slow, meditative rhythm that turns the act of sewing into a poetic gesture, in a continuous tension between presence and absence, fullness and void.

Mounting the fabric on cardboard reinforces the intimacy of the work, poised between drawing, embroidery and conceptual object. Works from 1978 mark a crucial junction in her practice: they anticipate the celebrated Libri Cuciti and already contain every element that would make her language immediately recognisable on the international stage, where her work is held by institutions including the MAXXI in Rome, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, the Fondazione Prada and the MAN in Nuoro.