“The works of Maurizio Camatta are generated from an energetic drive through informal expressionism. The artist is at ease with this style, conveying suggestions and tensions otherwise inexplicable“ Paolo Levi

Italian artist Maurizio Camatta is an extraordinary presence in the contemporary art world. As an Abstract Expressionist, his use of colour appears haphazard, provoking an emotional response in the viewer. These are dust explosions, rockets blazing through the layers of atmosphere, rainy skies and steamed up windows. There are fireworks imploding in the damp fog; stars bursting and dissolving into Northern Lights. The paintings have an oddly meditative quality to them, allowing your mind to drift off over the Turner-esque skies to better places, completely absorbed.

After this initial magnetism and beauty of colour, you’ll find that there is something ‘other’ lurking beneath the aesthetic. Distinguished by tensions and suggestions, the forms express themselves in the physicality of the chalks and plaster. Such crepuscular scenes are the ideal habitats for darker creatures, for bats and insects hovering in clouds, the quiet thrum vibrating just below the surface. In murky twilight, your eyes finally adjust, revealing that not everything is as it first seemed, that there are patterns and faces and shape-shifting shadows.

There are games of volumes and signs, contrasts and bright chromaticisms- yet nothing is there by accident, there is a sinister order in the chaos. Camatta’s artistic process is far more precise than it appears, with every shade and overlap engineered to achieve perfect equilibrium. His expressive art is pure science- the paintings do not end in the traditional sense, but are designed to resonate with the viewer long after.

Maurizio Camatta was born in Polla (SA). Now living and working in Pieve di Soligno (TV), he is also an active member of the Arti Visive group of Vittorio Veneto. His works are listed in the Annuario d'Arte Moderna, Archivio Storico, Museo delle Arti Palazzo Bandera (VA) and he has previously held important exhibitions in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Text by E. S. Jones