When I was in my early twenties, my older brother had a girlfriend from Sardinia. She was an actress living in New York, a captivating character and a robust dose of gorgeous Italian-ness, someone I would never forget. Such was the feeling in my heart when I visited “Maria Lai: A Journey to America” at Maggazino Italian Art in Cold Spring. Coming upon this show was like seeing a lady I already loved, an outrageous woman from Sardinia, this time Maria Lai.

To experience Lai’s six-decade career as an artist is to be utterly swept away by her, and the various thematic sections of this show are expertly curated by Paola Mura, artistic director at Magazzino. Featuring nearly 100 artworks (many on view and in the US for the first time), this retrospective offers a time-machine experience of Lai’s life (1919-2013) and her diverse creative practice. During a lively follow-up call with Mura (who is based in Sardinia and has organized exhibitions of Lai’s work in Italy), she described Lai as a “true artist” and a passionate person. “Art is a mystery, it does not respond to logic,” she said as we chatted about Lai’s choice to forgo marriage and children and remain independent in her lifetime.

I had the pleasure of taking the journey into Lai’s universe with Adam Sheffer, director at Maggazino, who spoke devotedly about the artist and the sense of being able to feel her hand in the work. Sheffer commented on the importance of Lai’s time in North America (she visited Manhattan and Montreal in the spring of 1968) and the resulting shift in her artistic sensibilities. Where earlier earth-toned paintings such as Ovile (1959) and Composizione Polimaterica (1964) reflect an experimental engagement with abstraction, by the time we reach Lai’s mixed media works Autunno (1968) and Notturno N.2 (1968) the mood is decidedly abstract and the somber color relationships and faux-photographic appearance reveal Lai’s interest in the tonal intricacies of photography.

Lai’s sculptural assemblage paintings are a delight, and Senza titolo (Telaio) (1972) is a brave example of her alignment with Arte Povera and her playful use of materials (this layered piece includes wooden popsicle sticks), while the chunky collage-ness of Telaio (1972) suggests that the work of contemporaneous artists such as Louise Nevelson and Robert Rauschenberg may have influenced her artistic choices. Still other artworks in this show embody the significance of her Italian roots and her affinity for weaving looms as a cultural and artistic symbol. Thread and stitched canvases such as Li trammi (2006) contain traditional Sardinian fabrics and Telaio in sole e mare (1971) with its crisscrossing of twine and white wood invokes a calm boat adrift on the Mediterranean Sea (one can almost feel the windy breeze come off this piece).

Downstairs, the exhibition takes an enchanting turn with two sections of work that demonstrate the integrity and sensitivity of Lai’s artistic spirit. The first of these is a series of black-and-white photographs and a video that document her relational art project Legarsi alla montagna (Tying Oneself to the Mountain) from 1981. Asked to create a memorial for citizens of Ulassai fallen in war, Lai instead chose to create “something for the living” and organized a performative experience for this modest Sardinian town by uniting the community and the surrounding environs. Using 16 miles of blue denim ribbon, neighbors worked together to weave the cloth into their dwellings and up into the rural areas nearby. The photos capture precious moments of utter joy as children and adults alike engage in the excited activity, among the most poignant of these visions is an elderly woman who appears to be in transcendent bliss as she pulls the fabric high above her head.

The second of these special sections, “Holding the Shadow by the Hand” is a room showcasing cloth artworks by Lai’s self-styled alter-ego, Maria Pietra. Here we encounter a children’s fairytale made entirely of fabrics and unfurling across three encased rows, each implied chapter of the story its own pure world within a world. The delicate style of the sweet creatures and thinly threaded animals that appear in this visual narrative partake in a childlike exploration of death, allowing us to feel kinship with these charitable characters.

If you have not visited Magazzino Italian Art—a stunning architectural gem of a museum tucked into the handsome woods of Cold Spring—now is the moment. This is the kind of comprehensive exhibition that should be a page in the encyclopedic tome of the greatest artists to have ever lived, among them Maria Lai, who boldly asserted: “I wasn’t born in Sardinia, I am Sardinia.”