Castagna Maurizio 1961 - XL - L’Origine del Movimento

Maurizio Castagna (Italy, 1961)
The Origin of Movement
Mixed media on canvas
In “The Origin of Movement,” Maurizio Castagna transforms the painterly gesture into visible energy, making the surface not the place of representation but that of the event. The work arises from an immediate and instinctive execution, in which the irregularity of the sign preserves the strength of the creative act.
From the blue and black core placed at the bottom of the canvas, ascending and curved trajectories develop, traversing the space and meeting with material explosions and spiral forms. These latter, deliberately irregular and imperfect, remain suspended between abstraction and possible recognizability: they can evoke orbits, cosmic structures, or organic shapes without ever becoming true figurations. The background, built through pale pink, blues, yellows and chromatic fragments, is not a simple backdrop but an active part of the composition.
The relationship between chance and control, matter and light, impulse and form constitutes the heart of the work. The title thus alludes not only to physical movement but to the very origin of the creative act: before form exists gesture, before order, impulse. Movement is not depicted: it is generated.
Maurizio Castagna, trained at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, has developed his research across more than fifty years of activity, moving from figuration toward an increasingly freer, more tactile and gestural painting. His path includes monumental and religious works, among which the “Stoning of Saint Stephen” (3.50 × 2.20 m), and episcopal portraits commissioned by the respective Sees, including those of Mons. Sibilla for the See of Asti, Mons. Bommarito for the See of Catania, and Mons. Garssia for the See of Caltanissetta. His activity is also documented in Bolaffi and Giorgio Mondadori art publications and anthologies.
In contemporary production, Castagna concentrates his research on the relationship between gesture, material, light and perception, experimenting with pigments, enamels, acrylics and resins and, in some works, phosphorescent materials capable of producing a double visual experience of light and darkness. Circles, trajectories, explosions and seemingly accidental marks become elements of a personal language in which the image does not impose a reading but remains open to the viewer’s perception and interpretation.
“The Origin of Movement” fully enters this research: a work in which energy, matter and gesture seem to fix on the canvas the very instant in which a form begins to exist.”