Castagna Maurizio 1961 - XL - Collisione Silenziosa

Maurizio Castagna (1961)
“Silent Collision”
Mixed technique on canvas
Signed by hand on the front and back.
Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Having trained at the Albertina Academy in Turin, Maurizio Castagna belongs to that tradition of Italian painting which, while its roots lie in classical culture and technical mastery, gradually evolved toward a gestural, informal, and energetic language. His artistic search spans decades of experimentation with matter and surface techniques, consistently keeping the physical act of painting as a central emotional and expressive experience.
After an initial period devoted to classical painting and important ecclesiastical commissions — including the monumental Leaping of Saint Stephen created for the Bishopric Office of Asti under the direction of architect Don Quaglia, as well as the official portraits of H.E. Mons. Sibilla, H.E. Mons. Bommarito and H.E. Mons. Garssia — Castagna has developed a highly personal painting language, in which matter itself becomes a place of tension and stratification.
In Silent Collision, the radial motif that has become emblematic of his production transforms into an energy core suspended between implosion and expansion. The large central field, dense and almost cratered, emerges from a network of nervous marks, scribbles, drips, and chromatic trajectories that traverse the surface with a centrifugal force. Far from any geometric rigidity, the circle appears as a living organism, a pulsation, a painting event.
The composition fully reveals the artist’s complex mixed technique: successive layers of pigments, acrylics, enamels, resins, and egg tempera coexist on a surface rich in matter, where each intervention leaves traces and memories visible beneath the later ones. Castagna’s works do not arise from rigid and predetermined planning; on the contrary, they emerge from an impulsive and instinctive process that echoes surreal automatism and the American tradition of Action Painting. The gesture frees itself from conventions and becomes primordial energy, universal language, emotional outburst.
Within this work one can perceive echoes of the gestural tension of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, of the atmospheric depth of Mark Rothko, and of the chromatic sensibility of Italian European Informalism, from Afro to Birolli, all filtered through a completely personal and recognizable voice. Castagna does not seek decorative abstraction, but constructs emotional fields of interference in which matter, light, and gesture collide.
As Okwui Enwezor observed:
«Castagna’s painting does not represent or express an objective or subjective reality: it discharges a tension that has accumulated inside...»
The artist’s works are present in public and private collections in Europe, the United States, Dubai, China, and Japan and have been published in major art catalogs, including Giorgio Mondadori’s Catalogo d’Arte Moderna Italiana and Bolaffi’s Catalogo d’Arte.
A work of strong visual impact and exceptional material presence, highly representative of the mature, recognizable, and significant phase of Maurizio Castagna’s artistic research."