Premise

The Word “Art” comes from the greek term techné, which defines the action of manually creating what is necessary and what goes beyond the daily necessity, in the creative stretching directed towards the manipulation and transformation of the natural things by effect of an expressive intelligence. The word greek, in those times, summarized by itself both art and handcraft without any substantial distinction. Only successively, in the latin world, the term became ars, artis, from which the modern terminology, that today we use in a daily basis. The manuality guided by intellect is therefore that centre of creativity. There cannot be great art without a considered amount of work, developed with technique, ability and strictness. Hence, the technical action of execution becomes the essential element of taking results into a certain level, that reaching dignifying aesthetics, they rise to the title of artwork. The difference between the latter and handicraft is within the level of serial production. A loneliness of the workshop lives its unique and unreproducible character. The masterpieces cannot be replicated, they are always only children, and this exactly is why they are origin of fascination and fatal attraction that captures the feeling and the contemplative spirit. It is true, however that within the contemporary degeneration, art has taken arguable alternative paths that focus around the idea rather than the practical execution and the selection of the material. By this, we are referring to the art of performance, the provocation of gestures and the absence of recognizable elements. All of these phenomena are present in the most arduous vanguard expositions that in their own way create discussion and divide critics. Many are the exaggerations and exaltations that often create curiosity and inspire reflexion. If this is true and proper art, it is still to decide. Surely, though, some irruptive and provocative artworks appear almost as an insult to those who apply hard work and dedication within the expressive field, following a method often conductible to a consolidated tradition from the local culture.

The conquer of matter

Maurizio Rossetto is son of a tradition that focuses on the application and the rigor of method, His Own natural eclecticism never granted nor banal, allows him to range from the art of decorative furniture to sculpting, without disdaining the pictorial experimentation, rich of virtuous and original inventions. His creative intelligence together with the gift of spontaneous craftiness has found pleasing application in several different fields, thanks to an incontinent curiosity of a researcher of different languages. Everything enlightens his interest and enthusiasm. For Rossetto, the matter contains within itself a gigantic potentiality and variegated possibilities of being manipulated and transformed according to his own wit and personal taste. There are no weight, consistence, hardness or value barriers. Michelangelo once started that within the matter there is everything, from which it is enough to take the superfluous in order to give matter itself life and form. Man, therefore, can intervene within every type of matter and accomplish alchemy. Rossetto confronts the most precious marbles (Carrara, Royal yellow, Botticino), quality woods (walnut, cherry, rosewood), painting on ceramics, woods themselves, and every possible surface. As master of high level furniture art, he creates extremely cherished inlays and carvings with applicative interventions of noble metals (e.g. gold or silver) that confer to the ensemble an incomparable preciousness. Unique and irreproducible decoration pieces are born this way, which are then catalogued by the artist himself and find, within the high quality market, the attention of a public made of careful estimators and collectors that appreciate taste and elegance. Every single artwork is rigorously handmade. The artworks, therefore, being the techné of the ancient Greeks.

Sculpting and painting

Within centuries, it has always been debated about the origin of these two great expressions of these two great expressions of the human soul. Both, Sculpting and Painting, have had excellent representations between artists and between historians that have revealed its merits and limits. Many of these characters have contributed with the writing of high level Art History for centuries. Hence, nowadays it is almost impossible, or even insane, to define a supremacy between Sculpture and Paintings. Sculptures present the third dimension, the volume, the real weight. It occupies a physical space that “breathes” life in its great nature. Paintings express illusions, dreams, bi-dimensionality. It appears poorer of Matter but gives back color to life. Paintings loyally illustrate the images of feeling, humor states and passions. It is not heavy but can recall infinite worlds, right in that illusion without deepness, where the eye enjoys imagining within the wonder of contemplating. Rossetto with its unconventional sensibility, manages both dimensions. His talent consent himself to sculpt and paint the most various materials. He discovers beauty within heavy and precious matters, and endures the irresistible wonder of the colors that embraces the hard surfaces. He is in a constant research for abstract shows, lines, symbols, interior constructions that translate themselves into accomplished artworks. The artist’s sculptures are an analysis of men and its origin. In a certain way, they become the excuse for concretizing a philosophy of the existence that sees Rossetto wonder about the last and extremes unknowns of the world and of the humanity that populates it. Rossetto feels that strong calling of a life that wants to be revealed. He understands that art can be instrument of knowledge, a mean of elevation to those subtle dimensions where it can be found the reason of existence that follows a Sense, a direction, and edges psychoanalysis. He wants to open the doors of time and go back to the past, to find the key of the origin from which we come. Therefore, his marble creations take life with interventions of gold and silver it is recalled the motif of the primordial egg of life, executed in real proportions. A powerful symbol coming from Myth that contains within itself all of the meanings of genesis and revelation, from which several religions, occidental and oriental philosophers inspire from. There lies the meaning of infinitively small and infinitively big. Even earth is an egg with several strata and a nucleus of life and pulsing matter, while the applications of gold recall the divine power of the sun and the infinite light. This could be why, in the ancient days, the crafting of golden leaves joined the sacred images like byzantine icons or gothic tables from the year 300. The look into shadows referable to primitive sculptures. The recovery of such motives proposes compositions of absolute synthesis that can be easily placed in the language of contemporary sculpture. Here, reality leaves the place to abstract thought that gives life to constructions full of a humanity that interrogates about destiny and about the hardness of a living ruptured by deep contradictions.But the artist, even if busy with intense reflection, can find the creativity to produce virtuous formals of authentic school. Sinuous figures balance with rigid forms interrupted by deep fractures that rupture surfaces creating unexpected shadow effects. In comparison with painting, Rossetto expands the natural vocation to abstract compositions uncommitted to the objectivity of the realness which maintains, however, a subtle recalling. His capacity of synthesis conducts him to the recovery of those geometric figures that still present a strong symbolic reminiscence. Spheres, rectangles, irregular polygons, and laws of cosmology where nothing is random but everything happens following a design of supreme intelligence. Chaos and Kosmos, disorder and universal order, follow each other with time and govern the planets of the universe. The chromatic choses invoke the strength of life that forms and expands, permeated from that light that determines it. They are compositions of an abstract taste complementary to those sculptures that have those characteristic motives apparently irrational. The paint brushing, intense and fast, creates a background for assembly materials that constitute the true moments of pure research without any historical reference.

Conclusions

The true and acclaimed institution of artwork of Maurizio Rossetto regards not only his leaning to multiplicity of expressive languages, but also to the will of integrating them into an unresolved commingling. The art of furniture, sculpture, painting, produced before in a separate way, now are assimilated into crossed experimentation, to the point of constituting a unicum of extraordinary compositional effect. For Rossetto, the interaction of materials is an essential peculiarity on his speech. The high creative intelligence, together with an unarguable talent creates not divisions but dialogues. An aspect, the latter, that connects to his idea of a world that sees everything connected by an invisible thread where casualty leaves place to the randomness mystery called visible and invisible.

         Giancarlo Bonomo