Corriere della Sera | Matteo Massagrande

The gaze beyond. The frames, with their particular cuts, enhance stained glass windows through which the green of a garden, the sea, the skyscrapers of a metropolis, or an industrial area can be glimpsed. They are windows opening onto corners of a physical and inner world. “Harmony is the key to be sought, harmony is a way of living.” Perhaps this is why the paintings with the silently thunderous atmospheres of Matteo Massagrande convey a sense of well-being, leading the viewer to share sensations, places, memories, scents, colors, and experiences, flooded by a dusty light.

A child prodigy, a painter and engraver with great technique, Massagrande (Padua, 1959) divides his work between his studio in Padua and that in Hajòs (Hungary). From his frequent travels around the globe, cycles of paintings and large compositions have emerged and continue to emerge, which since 1973 – with his first exhibition in Treviso – have led to over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, along with countless group exhibitions and competitions. His works are found in important museums, churches, and public and private collections. Some of his engravings have become part of the Print Room of the Uffizi in Florence.

Massagrande, as Ermanno Olmi said about his works: “In his paintings, everything evoked is suspended in that infinite moment that is the enchantment of poetry.” Is it the enchantment of a harmony that becomes synonymous with serenity and well-being? 

“In my painting, there is a way of facing life. I sum it up in one word: faith. Faith in a broad sense, understood as the search for the absent, looking for the spark that leads me to the hidden god. Generations of artists, great masters, sought it before me, from Kandinsky to Mondrian. It is a god that never reveals himself and that I simply call ‘harmony’: capable of providing comfort even in not finding it, but simply in searching for it. It is the praise of a quest.”

Article by Veronica Tuzii