FRANCESCO MAZZI


Both classic and contemporary

 

Francesco Mazzi is a goldsmith of painting, a miniaturist of matterand color with a great technical and formal sensitivity, an archaictype of craftsman-artist embossed, as for a bizarre game of fate, in the contemporary era. His works, with attention to the smallest detail with rare materials, precious woods, pigments, precious metals, gold leaves,handmade pastes and colors are meticulously decorated and finished as mysterious devotional objects: precious and rare caskets of beauty only apparently anachronistic, the art objects of this monk of painting appear today as capsules of the past which, in the happy congruence of a beauty miraculously found intact in the century of the negation of every canon, it returns to seduce with the grace of a search which seems to stubbornly challenge the passage of time, trends and fashions. The technical expertise of the artist, in his attention to detail, the richness of the decoration, the calligraphy of the material and color, it seems to retain within itself the ability of the ancient Italian artisans and a sensitivity entirely borrowed from its assiduous acquaintance with oriental culture. The result is the construction of an entire formal and conceptual universe which appears at the same time classic and contemporary, as it contains in itself typically oriental aesthetic suggestions and a western gaze, experimentation and decorativeness, attention to detail and the search for solutions always innovative. The future, they seem to say in a low voice and with a delicate touchworks by Francesco Mazzi, is in the rediscovery of the secrets buried in ours more remote past.


Vittorio Sgarbi
Taken from Artists '22 - International Yearbook of Contemporary Art - Art Now Editore