Exposition of the painter PIERO MASCETTI
I recently had the good fortune to attend a live performance by Piero Mascetti, whilst he was busy giving life, color and feeling to an initially amorphous canvas of 206 x 93 cm, in front of an audience with whom, although actively painting, he managed to converse with relaxed tranquility, but from which at the same time he abstracted himself in moments of absolute and intimate creative rapture. I believe that this is what exactly represents the feature that mostly distinguishes the style of the young, but already widely appreciated Roman painter, the balance – which also takes back to the most typical Italian tradition – between the flawless mastery of the technique, or what might be called the craftsmanship, and the powerful rise of emotions, rendered by the ostentatious presence of matter, by the persistence of strong colors and smells, in a word, the inspiration. Between the two poles, the perspicacity of the look and of the taste, capable of composing multiples into units, of suggesting “visions” of reality (never in narrative forms), according to an artistic career which ranges, as pointed out by others, from traditional Renaissance to the art of the informal artists, in primis Georges Rouault. It is therefore a motive of genuine satisfaction to be able to present here in Beirut, where the pictorial experimentation is extremely lively and refined, a selection of his paintings, precisely inspired to the Mediterranean (its colors, its contrasts, its atmosphere) which subtly approaches and combines the two countries, since ever friends, Lebanon and Italy. For this beautiful show, I must and I want to thank the Audi Foundation – in the persons of its President Raymond Audi, its extremely dynamic director Liliane Tyan and all its staff – that have shared the project with us from the beginning and that, hosting it in the splendid Villa in Ashrafieh, have given it the charm of an exceptional event. Attilio De Gasperis Director of the Italian Cultural Institute