Michelangelo Toffetti (1976) - Cavallo nella nebbia

Michelangelo Toffetti, after obtaining the middle school diploma in 1991, learns his first artistic skills in the Bergamasque workshop of Fornovo San Giovanni run by his father Mario Toffetti, known as “the sculptor of the Popes,” who was active in Cremona churches and later in Rome and the Vatican. The young Michelangelo moves in an environment that is fundamental for learning sculpting techniques: shaping, pinning, enlargement, finishing, smoothing, and polishing with grinders or emery paper. He also works with modeling plasticine and clay (terracotta) for creating preparatory sketches. Casting is done through silicone rubber molds to produce the wax positive of the work, a necessary step for bronze casting (lost-wax casting).

In interior development he creates freestanding decorative architectural elements consisting of wooden beams (load-bearing) bound with frayed Manila twine, a straw-like material soaked in plaster.

In the summer of 1995 he begins his pictorial research, starting from figurative work and then developing into abstract paintings, archaic and mythological faces with a material-based technique. In 2005 he develops futurist lines and dynamics.

In 2014 he was awarded as Italian excellence at Franco Nuschese’s Milano Café in Washington.

Since 2018 he lives and works in Carrara.

"Cavallo bianco nebbia" (White Horse in the Fog) is an oil painting with an intense, passionate gesture intended to convey the moment when one is in the fog and finds the strength to break through it by galloping. It is about recognizing and rediscovering one’s inner strength.