Castagna Maurizio 1961 - XL - La Soglia del Silenzio

THE THRESHOLD OF SILENCE
Acrylic, plaster, and mixed media on canvas
The Threshold of Silence is a work in which Maurizio Castagna transforms the surface of the canvas into a crossing place: a threshold, precisely, between what emerges and what remains hidden. The white, luminous matter does not serve as a simple background but welcomes shocks, marks, layers, and sudden openings of light. The black, energetic and incised, builds an almost architectural texture; the blues, yellows, and pinks intervene as emotional apparitions, fragments of memory, and possibilities of breath.
Spirals and circular forms, recurring in the artist’s research, do not describe recognizable objects: they are nuclei of energy, points of condensation of thought and matter. In this composition, silence is not the absence but a powerful presence, charged with inner tensions. The painting proceeds through accumulation, erasure, scratch, and re-emergence, creating an unstable balance between immediate gesture and rigorous construction.
As critic Okwui Enwezor observed, Castagna’s painting “does not represent or express an objective or subjective reality: it releases a tension that has accumulated inside.” This reading finds a particularly strong confirmation in The Threshold of Silence: the painting does not tell a scene, but makes an inner experience visible, transforming emotion into sign, matter, and rhythm.
Maurizio Castagna trained at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. After his beginnings in classical painting, he developed a personal research in the field of material and gestural abstraction. He has undertaken important commissions for Italian ecclesiastical institutions, including portraits for the Curias of Asti, Catania, and Caltanissetta, and a large canvas dedicated to the Stoning of Saint Stephen. His works are present in public and private collections in Europe, the United States, Dubai, China, and Japan; his work has also been highlighted in Italian art publications and catalogs, including Bolaffi and Giorgio Mondadori’s Catalog of Italian Modern Art.