Rhythm on canvas
The first time we saw Giulio Masieri was at the Trieste Tattoo Expo, and he literally left us speechless. He danced in front of the canvas invading, he seemed to paint with his whole body, moving a much larger area than we can expect from any painter. Sounds and colours seemed to converse in a new and unique dimension, mesmerising. To find him then in the studio of our friend Andrea Pietrobon, painting a real fresco (not something that resembles us, but a real fresco!), left us dumbfounded once again. The contrast between the impetuosity of the live performance and the calmness of a technical and meditated execution made us realise that we were dealing with an artist of rare calibre.
When did you start painting and why?
I started painting at an early age to imitate my father, a man with a very creative personality. I felt stimulated by him to create games, paint, invent new contraptions for the fun that lies at the heart of the creative process.
Who were your teachers?
I have had many teachers, painters and others, who have left me a part of their knowledge, mostly my peers. Clearly my learning has also come from books and I have had the opportunity to meet many enlightening figures in my work experiences.
How important is illusion in art?
The illusion as a fiction of reality counts a lot if you have a technical approach, but the beautiful idea is never enough for me: I also need to see more within an image. Complexity is very attractive to me: it can be translated as technical virtuosity but it must also be able to excite. I don’t like products that are only technically perfect, nor purely intellectual artistic creations, because I consider a work to be complete only when it encompasses both aspects.
How, in your opinion, can contemporary art refer back to the past?
I think art has an obligation to refer back to the past, if the contemporary exists, it is due to the past. The more I study our predecessors, the more I find myself discovering innovative things. Tracing our artistic history serves as a cue for me to reflect: we are the fruit of our culture, so a comparison with our masters becomes an obligatory step to be able to look ahead with due awareness. I see artistic evolution as a passing of the baton from one generation to the next, where everyone puts their everyday life, their historical context. In the end you discover that the needs are always the same, only made explicit with the means of their time. The ones I prefer are the figures who are always able to be innovative, like, for example, Leonardo Da Vinci.
What is musical art for you?
A painter of the second type can afford to physically walk around the subject, fully capturing its three-dimensionality. In painting you have software such as Photoshop installed directly in your hand, what more could you want, it is also free! Good photographers are those who can paint with a camera. If you look at Tiepolo’s painted squares they look 3D, you cannot achieve the same results with photography.Musical art is an ancient idea; it encompasses the concept of a unique art, capable of encompassing several disciplines. My project, specifically, is called AUDIOPAINT: by now, it has reached nine years of life and is constantly evolving. It is a musical instrument that looks like a simple whiteboard, in reality, on the back I have placed levers that press on buttons, so as to create sounds when I draw. The complexity of the board is not immediately perceived, many people think that there are bases during my performances, in truth, the music is managed live precisely through this mechanism of levers. One of the interesting things is that it differs from any touch pad because the mechanical transmission also allows an analogue approach.
Your artistic research has led you to paint frescoes and wall paintings: why this stylistic choice?
I have always loved big things, when I was a child I played in large spaces, a sheet of paper was insufficient for me to express what I wanted to say. It has always given me great satisfaction to be able to control an extended dimension, and walls became suitable supports for my needs. At the same time, my work history led me to adopt wall painting as a source of income.
Has art been superseded or sublimated by photography?
Absolutely not because photography is flat while painting is three-dimensional. There are painters who use a photograph to paint a model, others who use a live model. The former translate what they see two-dimensionally, the latter also investigate what lies behind and inside the figure.
A painter of the second type can afford to physically walk around the subject, fully capturing its three-dimensionality. In painting you have software such as Photoshop installed directly in your hand, what more could you want, it is also free! Good photographers are those who can paint with a camera. If you look at Tiepolo’s painted squares they look 3D, you cannot achieve the same results with photography.
Among your acquaintances, is there anyone truly ‘infamous’?
The world is full of notorious people, but every cloud has a silver lining…
