The work of an artist is not to create paintings,
it is to bear witness to their passage through the brief history of the human condition.
Art is nothing more than the diary of a generation passing through time.
Arturo Carmassi
In whatever way a Carmassi enters your home, through barter, through exchange of money for goods, through donation, through telekinesis, consider that it has not reached you in order to match the colour of the walls, to cover the mark of a break-in or the fading of wear. A subterranean vein, whose path is as improbable as it is logical, has brought it to you: it is not you who have chosen it, you are simply the point of convergence of a very fine network of occasions and events.
Andrea Camilleri in “Arturo Carmassi”, Quaderni della nuova
Cairola, Milano, s.d., 1973.
Arturo Carmassi
The entire artistic trajectory of Arturo Carmassi is marked by an incessant expressive research encompassing painting, sculpture, and printmaking.
His stylistic signature lies in a continuous technical experimentation: from the rigour of oils and inks to the material freedom of collage and sand-based works, up to the use of unconventional elements. Wax, corrugated cardboard, tar, walnut husk, fabrics, and reclaimed wood become, in his hands, instruments for exploring new sculptural and visual possibilities…
Arturo Carmassi Archive
Arturo Carmassi represents a central chapter of twentieth-century Italian artistic modernity. The creation of an artist’s archive dedicated to his production responds to the need to preserve, organize, and make legible the complexity of his oeuvre, which spans languages, techniques, and decades of experimentation, restoring continuity and depth to his trajectory. The Carmassi Archive is therefore intended as a critical instrument, capable of supporting the study, protection, and correct transmission of the Maestro’s work over time.
Exhibitions
After his first solo exhibition in 1954 at the Il Milione gallery in Milan, numerous prestigious international venues hosted his works. From the Venice and São Paulo Biennales to exhibitions in Paris, Strasbourg, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and to major solo exhibitions in Italy such as the one at Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara curated by Pierre Restany in 1977, the “Cosmogonie” at the French Academy in Villa Medici in Rome in 1986, and the major exhibition at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in 1997…
Association Maestro Arturo Carmassi
The Association dedicated to Maestro Arturo Carmassi was established with the aim of preserving and renewing over time the memory of the artist, together with the human values and ethical tension that guided his artistic research.
Within this framework, a central role is assigned to the preservation and enhancement of the artist’s archive, understood as a living testimony to his creative journey and as a tool for study and critical inquiry.