Meet Raphael Moses, a follower of the great Italian Renaissance artist. He was commissioned to paint the Monastery of the Most Holy Rosary in the town of Marino, near the Italian capital. Today he paints canvases, organizes art exhibitions, and teaches visual arts to anyone who wishes, including people who need healing and therapy through art. Now, based on the cultural association RAMO ART founded by him, and with the patronage of the local authorities of the town of Marino (Province: Rome), he is organizing the International Arts Festival in Marino. We met Raphael Moses to tell our readers about his work and to invite them to take part in the Festival scheduled for March 2027.
Raphael, your most recent artistic work was creating the cover for Sabrina Sodi’s book “Silence in the Infinite”. Please tell us about your collaboration with this talented author.
Sabrina invited me to work on the artistic design of her book, which is autobiographical. It’s a story that led a person to rethink her life positions. It is interesting as a subjective experience viewed from childhood to now. The cover needed to reflect the concept of the content itself – that is, to convey the idea of the book through visual art. The version I proposed and painted is a centuries-old olive tree with a twisted thick trunk, viewed from a low angle looking up, and bright sun shining through the branches. The light is not seen at the end of a tunnel, It is penetrating through the tree of life. The rays passing through are sources of light. This concept is combined with the colour and texture solutions.
According to Sabrina Sodi, the author, this cover design is exactly what she put into the content of the book. To hold a presentation of this work, Sabrina and I decided: we need to create an exhibition of my paintings that will set the atmosphere and speak about my involvement as an artist in this project. Of course, I have new works and old works, and each of them hides its own meaning, but in the context of our joint work with the author of the book, the exhibition is relevant.
Please tell us about the Festival you are organizing. What kind of festival is it, and what are its goals and objectives?
The goal of the Festival is very simple. It is to give any small theater company the opportunity to bring their work to a wide audience. Identifying talented actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and playwrights becomes possible within the system we propose. The goal is to give small companies space to grow, and to provide them with the tools to integrate into the cultural space of contemporary society. Right now the limitations they face are total. Basically, there is no system to help them develop. We want to create and place just such a system at their disposal. The experience of organizing projects of this kind involves synthetic art, which includes different art forms brought together in one space. Although there is a division between a theater composer and a screenwriter, theater is the space in which different art forms merge into one whole. A theater artist with experience in theater has the opportunity to gain not only a narrow specialization. He becomes a painter who relates to composition and to the entire grammar of theater. In our Association, professionals from different fields work together. In the context of theater art, these are experts of different profiles, but professionals in their field. We are organizing the festival to integrate the experience of theater companies into the social realities of the modern world and to give them the opportunities the theater system does not provide.
What is the role of cooperation with local government bodies, ministries and departments?
Experience has shown that cooperation with ministries and departments of culture, as well as with local administration bodies, has always made the process of promoting, not creating, a cultural product easier. The support of these structures is absolutely necessary. In our work on the festival we are preparing now, we are collaborating with the Marino municipality and the administration of this town, hoping for the support of the authorities and for interaction with them as the structures defining the entire cultural life of the town and the region. We submitted an application for patronage and received a positive reply.
What is your experience working in theater?
I had a wonderful experience working in theater. It was a children’s theater studio. We created a project within the context of supplementary school education. We performed plays aimed at a child audience in collaboration and interaction with the Department of Education. This is interesting as my own theatre experience – at first I was invited as a painter: a bright premiere show for schoolchildren was being prepared. I was invited to draw the set designs for that show. But I got so involved in the process that over the next two years I played the main role in the play. That’s how I gained amazing experience in acting.
What place does poetry hold in your work?
Poetry is one of the forms of art. The separation and isolation of individual forms, in my opinion, is a convention. To express a complex of feelings, ideas and fantasies, any form available to the artist will do. Discovering which form is available is the result of a process of trial and error. For some subjective content, it is poetry, for others it is painting. Abstraction of forms also helps. Some people express themselves through space, others through word or colour. It all depends on what is accessible at the given moment. This is not a question of academic education, but a question of the accessibility at the moment of forms that express the content one would like to convey to the audience. In the broad sense of the word, this is the language of communication between the artist and the viewer. I do not claim to call myself a poet, but if any poetic form resonates with what I want to say, then I use it. I believe any form, for an artist in the broad sense, is simply a means of expression.
You are a professional painter. Please tell us about your training for the artistic craft. Where did you study?
I graduated from the University of Culture at the Department of Museology. By training I am a museologist with a specialization in “museum design”. The core subjects of my studies were painting, graphics, and composition. I am an artist with a historical education, since initially the training was focused on museum space: creating exhibitions, organizing museum space through artistic means to translate a scientific concept into an artistic language – the language of visual perception. This is a foundation that covers a very broad worldview. Museology is a synthetic art that involves colour, light, installations, organization of space, as well as contrasts of color, form and object. The task is to make the object, as a historical source that is displayed in the exhibition, begin to speak. The artifact itself, of course, is silent. Only by placing it in an environment and space that tells about a certain period or a specific personality do we make this object enter into a dialogue with the viewers and speak to them through perception. This can also be a script for the display. To animate the space and understand how to do it requires a professional level. After graduating from University, I wrote my post-graduate studies work at the Stroganov Academy on the topic “The Art of Museum Exhibition in the Context of the Artistic Avant-garde”. It was about constructivism, Kandinsky’s compositions, suprematism, Malevich’s works, and El Lissitzky’s discoveries and experiments in compositional space. I worked on everything that brought space to life through composition, lines, forms and their combination. This is invaluable experience. As a result, I created twenty works as the chief artist of exhibitions within museum spaces. All these works are my own authorial projects.
You have taken part in exhibitions and organized them. What do exhibitions mean to you today?
I organized exhibitions both within the context of the Department of Culture and within the context of the Ministry of Culture. There were exhibitions on historical themes, art exhibitions, and applied ones. The themes were different, but they were, one way or another, related to art and history. They examined everything that was in the museum space. And for the exhibitions I had certain achievements and recognition at a high level. But one of my greatest successes I consider to be my work in Italy on the restoration and painting of a Dominican monastery, the restoration of its frescoes, the painting of its ceiling and walls, on which I spent four years alone. I consider the recognition of the Vatican and Pope Francis, who blessed me and sent a letter of thanks, to be my greatest pride. This is what I consider my main achievement and I am very proud of it.
What role does music play in your life as an artist?
I relate to music as a form. If the form expresses the content, and if the artist (musician) manages to say through the form of this space what he wanted to say – then it has succeeded. Music has its own tools, its own language, grammar, and laws. But it is a language that can not be separated from other art forms. Music is interesting to me personally because, as a form, it is very abstract. Music can most directly express those experiences or sensations, feelings that the composer wants to convey to his listener. When architecture is spoken of as music frozen in stone, this expands the concept of music as a form and as a space. It is inextricably linked with other art forms. We can observe its projections in almost all other types of art. But, as an abstract form, it is the most expressive. Music is most accessible for direct contact with our feelings.
Are you planning to organize a festival for filmmakers as well? Do you have experience working in cinema?
Our festival is conceived as an Arts Festival. We want to cover the arts in a broad range. To provide platforms for representatives of all art forms, including filmmakers. But for this, the implementation of this project is needed: step-by-step actions focused on expanding the platform and explaining the direction of art. This is exactly our goal in creating this space. As a personal example, I will cite a series that we shot during covid and lockdown. In that era of restrictions we understood that no restrictions affect the development of projects; on the contrary, they provoke the discovery of some new forms. At that time a series was shot in which I acted – “Quarantine Code”. This is a projection onto “Pinocchio”, but in modern style, a comedy entertainment series. Its value is that it opens up space and possibilities, while circumstances at that time were closing everything down.
Tell our readers how they can take part in the International Arts Festival.
We are open to any contacts and projects, from the most classical and traditional to the most unusual, even absurd ones. For us, the main thing is to understand the idea of those who have the concept. If there is a subject for discussion, we are open to any joint creativity. We will be glad to welcome all companies. We do not (yet!) have selection criteria for a preliminary conversation, so do not be afraid of any judgments or evaluations: we are here to develop all the ideas that may come to your mind. It is enough to get in touch with us. We are leaving the contact information here.
Olga Matsyna
