DARIO MELLONE: FROM MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST TO DIGITISING ARTWORKS WITH NFTMICRO

Dario Mellone’s artistic legacy is now also available in the form of AerariumChain’s NFTMicro. An innovative way that the Dario Mellone Foundation has chosen to make this artist’s work known and to raise funds for its preservation and maintenance.

Dario Mellone was a nationally known artist for his panels in one of the country’s leading newspapers, but still little known for his personal and wide-ranging artistic production throughout his life.
Dario Mellone’s artworks speak of current affairs, progress, the future… He has been the illustrator of Corriere della Sera since 1967, after being discovered by Dino Buzzati, then deputy editor of Domenica del Corriere, and his illustrations have depicted the main news events for over thirty years. This work was accompanied by his continuous and incessant artistic production, almost hidden from the public due to his obsessive reluctance to separate himself from his artworks and from accepting, as he himself wrote, ‘the dynamics of the contemporary market’.

Dario Mellone’s vision, so involved and anchored in the present and the daily chronicle of the most intense post-war years, was that of the world ranging from the individual to the collective dimension, analysing the interaction between biological structures – down to the cellular level – and progress. Perhaps a bit of a fatalist, he argued back in the 1970s and 1980s that the technological progress he was witnessing would inevitably lead to the destruction of humanity. An extremely pessimistic view, sharpened in the last years of his life, which, however, proves to be completely topical today, as we witness the environmental disasters linked to industrial exploitation and the new unknowns, more of a social nature, on the implications of artificial intelligence.
The Dario Mellone Museum houses a very personal collection of artworks, selected by the artist himself before his death, which are the most representative of his artistic and personal career. Works that already boast several publications and critical analyses. Now, this legacy of 70 works has been scanned to create their digital twin.

This precision work, carried out by the Artmen of AerariumChain, resulted first in a fingerprint of each artwork notarised in blockchain, and then in NFTMicro of each artwork. The sale of the NFTMicro will allow the Foundation to raise funds that will be used for the conservation and maintenance of the collection itself.
The choice of the NFTMicro responds first and foremost to the desire to make Dario Mellone’s production known from this inalienable nucleus of artworks, but at the same time respects the author’s choice during his lifetime to manage access to his art without intermediaries. This will is in fact respected thanks to a conscious use of blockchain, a technology that allows transactions and the management of access rights without any intermediation.
This digitised collection is now available on AerariumChain’s marketplace, on which virtual tokens for access to the 3D artworks, called NFTMicro, can be purchased directly from the Foundation at an affordable value. By purchasing an NFTMicro you contribute directly to the support of the Foundation and the Museum without intermediary commissions. The NFTMicro will allow users to safely admire the high-resolution 3Ds of Mellone’s artworks from any device.

We are in the presence of a multifaceted artist working with different materials, where 3D technology allows us to appreciate in detail all aspects of the artworks, most of which are never flat and which emerge from the surface creating new volumes. Assemblages and material paintings that can be appreciated precisely thanks to this technology.
A choice that allows, on the one hand, to give a new life to Dario Mellone’s artworks and, on the other hand, to contribute to their conservation with a click, receiving in return the possibility of discovering and appreciating the art and vision of an artist who has told a lot about our time.