Arturo Carmassi leading exponent of contemporary art

[cited Lando Landini, 1956].

“Contemporary art is in an essential way art of development, of poetic determination in continuous becoming; the most significant artists of this century testify to this in a most precise way. In this becoming of contemporary culture, Carmassi has authoritatively inserted himself with such sure poetic insight as to suggest confidence in the ever-deepening definition of his personality, already strongly representative of this moment.”

Alive

[cited Raffaele Carrieri, 1967].

“I live in the center, I live at the edges, I live in its fringes. The surface of his paintings is full of ribs, inlets, unevenness, intertwined serpentines leading to nurseries. There are roots and pulps, thorns, molds, wasps, florescences and an infinity of seeds. A seed that will become a tree, woman, man, grain, physiognomy, eyes, gaze. The subject is of little importance in the fertile repertoire of his forms: it can be a memory, an accident, a desire, an initial presence, a departure. Towards its creation it is an essentially provocative element.”

An extraordinary fervor

[cited Mario De Micheli, 1970].

“An extraordinary fervor, an impulsive energy, a stimulating imagination has always and at every different moment lifted his tests above the brilliant formal exercise, giving them a character of vivid emotion, of expressive invention.”

Rare circumstance

[Cited in Pierre Klossowski, 1972].

“It is a rare circumstance that a painter knows how to find in his innermost self an emblematism that, if it always and necessarily comes from a distant tradition, offers him a way of actualizing his phantasmatic world and at the same time his vision of objects.”

The impetus, the passionate realism

[cited Patrick Waldberg, 1971].

“In the face of Arturo Carmassi’s painting, what strikes and alarms is first of all the impetus. Passionate realism, to borrow the beautiful expression Yves Bennefoy applied to the Baroque, constitutes his privileged domain.”

Complex, simple

[cited Michele Greco, 1972].

“The figure of Arturo Carmassi, painter, graphic designer, sculptor, is among the most complex and, contradictorily, at the same time simplest figures in contemporary art.”

Traveler in metaphysics

[cited Giuseppe Marchiori, 1973].

“Carmassi has taken a journey without certain dimensions into the fascinating of metaphysics, amid unreal semblances and diabolical presences, questioning the order of things, as in the most disconcerting visions of Hyeronimus Bosch.”

Surrealism, irradiated and not applied

[cited Giancarlo Vigorelli, 1974].

“And it would be a serious mistake, above all misleading, to open a discourse on Carmassi by starting from surrealism, today even more so that after having ignored it, or badly reduced it to one of many current fashions, everyone makes an easy as well as obtuse disguise of it. Meanwhile, if anything, it should be said, documented and illustrated, that Carmassi’s particular surrealism, irradiated and applied, comes from and proceeds from the presurrealism that circulates within and surrounds metaphysical painting.”

Interweaving Eros and Myth

[cited Giorgio Di Genova, 1974].

“Eros and myth intertwine in Carmassi. In him the feeling of modern sensuality is mixed with the regret of lost classicism, […]. Carmassi seems to have understood that it is in ambivalence that the most complete and complex fascination resides, that is, the one that acts and interacts on individuals of both sexes, precisely because it is continuous, found beyond the discontinuous.”

Solidly configured personality

[Quoted by Enrico Crispolti, 1975].

“Carmassi’s appears to be a solidly configured personality not only in the consistency and originality of cultural choices and the quality of the bearers, but operating in a territory scrupulously distant from narrow implications in tending and their contingent tendencies.”

Among the most talented artists of our time

[cited Antonio “Tony” Porcella, 1976].

“[…] A painterly discourse that of Carmassi, which through a long evolution, has stripped itself of all lexical superstructure to arrive at the pure essence of form and color. […] places Arturo Carmassi among the most talented artists of our time.”

The transition from the indicative to the conditional

[Cited in Pierre Restany, 1977].

“[…] the change of mode and time in the conjunction of Carmassian language, the transition from the strict limitation of the concept to its full extension, from descriptive exactitude to the field of virtual imagination, the transition of the indicative to the conditional. […] evolution of a singular character, of an artist among the richest in imagination who lives in absolute symbiosis with his alter ego, of a craftsman among the most rigorous.”

An acclaimed artist even as a young man

[Quoted in Evening Gazette, Turin, October 1951].

“Of the abstractionists and also of all the painters who have come to fame, Carmassi is the youngest. He is only 25 years old but already has a singular artistic personality. He lives and works in large studio on the eighth floor of number 136 Corso Galileo Ferraris.”

A master of emotions

[cited Marco Valsecchi, Feb. 1954].

“More than a tale of objects, it is a tale of emotions, which is not silent about earthly moods, encounters with the world and figures of men in a lyrical fusion of color and feeling.

[cited Franco Russoli, 1959].

“…Carmassi’s paintings were transcriptions, in chords of chromatic timbres and flowing auburn structures, of moods and evocative fantasies.”