impop
arrigo musti
RAIN
serie
MAURIZIO CALVESI
A new page in painting
The faces robustly outlined by Arrigo, with powerful volumetry and tormented colour, succeed in expressing the beauty of that humanity that western man considers “different” and at the same time the risk to which that humanity is condemned, the looming or imminence of profound scars that the calamities of the world engrave on it like marks of fire. The persecutions, the devastations, the degradation to which these faces can be exposed or violently submitted are answered with the joy of a provocation by the coloured plasticity of those semblances, the extraordinary light of the eyes, the smile of the strong teeth or the descent of the woven head of hair, the broad space of the faces, between the well-drawn cheekbones and the noses protruding with delicate energy .These beautiful paintings by Arrigo, with the almost neo-divisionist variations (but in an expressionist key) in the spreading of colours, with the confidence of the signs that can express pain but also happiness, sweetness, at all events fascination, with their frontal or rounded arrangements of planes with a sort of flavour of archaic sculpture, constitute a new page in painting, and not only Sicilian, and attest to sincere and empathic emotion of love towards the most unfortunate creatures in a world that surrounds us on all sides, though we remain blind in seeing it.
Maurizio Calvesi
Golden Lion Award Venice Biennal 2020
ACID RAIN
serie
GIUSEPPE TORNATORE
The estetic of commotion
Someone says that a real artist should be recognisable in any of its works. That a subtle and invisible thread inevitably crosses the thematic and expressive disparities. That authentic artists substantially cannot renounce to carry inside themselves, often unconsciously, a sign, a premonition, a totally personal trait that marks the entire work in an unrepeatable unicum (synthesis), and at the same time reveals its ultimate hidden sense. If it is so, the young Arrigo Musti is already one of them.
Indeed his paintings possess the merit of infusing since the first instant the perception of being in front of an accomplished and unequivocal style, reinforced by a noble and unusual poetics, imperious and sincere, constantly torn by the wounds of an ancient as well as unexpected recognition of the pain. Beyond the tremendous ability to merge lights, forms and colours in an innovative and visionary harmony, from some aspects provocative, distressing and disquieting, what especially strikes and surprises in the work of Arrigo seems to me his aesthetics of commotion for a world that has lost its own mythology. The modern affliction of a poet, who longs for a universe of heroes and legends, where human beings are not anymore able to reflect. His desolate glance to an Olympus of Gods uninterested to our destiny as a result of the humiliation by men’s blindness.
(born 27 May 1956) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is considered as one of the directors who brought critical acclaim back to Italian cinema.[1] In a career spanning over 30 years he is best known for directing and writing drama films such as Everybody's Fine, The Legend of 1900, Malèna, Baarìa and The Best Offer. Probably his most noted film is Cinema Paradiso, for which Tornatore won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has also directed several advertising campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana.[2]
Tornatore is also known for his long-standing association with composer Ennio Morricone, who composed music for thirteen Tornatore feature films since 1988.