Two recent Italian exhibitions, both taking place in 2002 and focussing on artistic ceramics, the first one held in Castellamonte (Turin province), where the “designer” stoves (including those designed by our artists) made an impression, and the second one held in Genoa, have given prominence to the Italian artist Domenico Masotti; for years Masotti had been working with a variety of materials and through very different techniques, all standing out for the very high depth and insights they conveyed. So here he comes as a producer of painted ceramics, different gifts and fancy articles displaying various aspects of design excellence, not last painting and graphics: this has allowed him to succeed in conveying the worlds and “secret gardens” (which was the title of an exhibition he has recently held in Milan at the San Tommaso Gallery) through a range of symbols revealing an extremely high level of elegance, background and metaphysicalness.
Masotti is not the usual artist who copies and imitates: he filters through his own soul and mind every vision, and subsequently highlights, through a fantastic form of germination, a flurry of images, which he translates through his pictorial art, after having synthesised their shapes, lines and colours. His overall work acquires completeness in the light of a significant prize that the European Community has awarded to him for his artistic production in Milan, in 2002, and for the invitation by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage to hold in 2004 an anthological exhibition on the premises of the Senate House in Milan, which is where the State Archives are located. His painting focuses on two themes: the world of nature, that is the vegetable kingdom in its growing and becoming as a result of organic drives, and the animal and human kingdom, with all its features, such as sensuality, passion, grace and power.

These are two words that grow intertwined in a great variety of works, which convey their meaning and justification through a range of appealing titles, such as “Temptations”, “Moonscape”, “Towards the Sun”, “Lovers”, etc. Each representation or image displays no reference to real life, but is accepted in its contained and meditated abstraction; abstraction is not an end in itself, as a geometric pattern would be, but still has a musical and lyrical power springing from the very sensitivity of the artist, who somewhat metaphorically transforms reality into synthesis, through personal symbols.
Domenico Masotti is an artist who is yet to be discovered, thanks to his ability to interpret the world stage, by grasping all its magic formulas and translating them into intellectual or rather poetical reflections (not last being the Pascoli childish one), expression of an extremely new language, in which art, whilst being presented in a concise and summarised style, still maintains certain psychological and colour effects. All these forms draw on a study of the best 20th century historic and artistic heritage, ranging from Paul Klee to Luca Crippa, in which space and time manifest in the impact they have on the world and on the mysterious forms that, among twists and turns, soar into the sky; newly born vegetable forms or anthropomorphic forms enveloping matter as it oscillates between darkness and light. The vegetable landscape, the world emerging through these descriptions and the human system with its amazingly sweet iconographies, not only display a precise and accurate execution, but reveal a play made of rhythms, lines in motion, colours and hues ranging from reds to greens, blues and even browns and earth-related colours, with a preference for clay and terracotta. Masotti knows how to make these images and this world live not only on the canvas but also on ceramic sculptures, thanks to the thoroughness of the techniques he has always devoted himself to. Not last comes painting on sandpaper, with the very purpose of better conveying nature’s motion in its becoming, in its growing and in its life project. The bodies portrayed do not only belong to the vegetable kingdom; we also have human bodies, chiefly women’s, since they more fully experience the natural mysteries of birth, they grow thin and tall with delicate graphic exasperation, almost like long-stemmed flowers; Masotti portrays women’s bodies in a new way, by capturing their essence, value, grace and beauty. An artist such as ours finds opportunities for expression at the turn of the millennium, thanks to his ability to relate the eternal themes of life and of existence through a familiar and ritual language, an idiom that is at the same time interior and synthetic, lively and high-spirited.
Translated by interpres sas

Vita di coppia, ceramica policroma monocottura, 70x37,5