Vincenzo Musardo - Untitled

The subject of this work was conceived through a citationist approach. In the phenomenology of artistic movements, citationism consists of reproposing an image from the past, from the historical-artistic tradition, recontextualizing it according to the artist's sensibility. Citationism has been and is transversal to various contemporary artistic movements, such as Surrealism, Metaphysical Art, and Anachronism. Vincenzo Musardo has directed his entire artistic research toward this type of approach, reproposing images of the past in his multi-material canvases.

In his work, Vincenzo Musardo seeks to breathe new life into ancient works. For this reason, his artistic process involves selecting images from the art of the past—Greek, Etruscan, Egyptian, but also from the Middle Ages or the Baroque period in Lecce—and reconfiguring them in his canvases. These are fragments of bodies, armor, figures of gods and men, which, through Musardo's highly personal technique of mixed-media oil painting, acquire a genuine tactile consistency on the canvas. Following the process of Metarchaic art, as Musardo himself defined it in 1974, the artist guides the viewer on a journey into the past, to discover a connection with our roots, becoming a conduit for a strong connection between past and present. All of this, however, presupposes a reworking by the artist, in order to avoid a mere exercise in pedantry. From this perspective, Vincenzo Musardo imbues his quotation with new meaning, first and foremost by giving a precise artistic value to the material (a fundamental element in contemporary aesthetics). The material used by Musardo, in fact, is both a reference to the ancient (in its refined degradation that cloaks the object in an antique patina) and an affirmation of the present (being the result of a synthesis of iron oxides, marble dust, and adhesives, resulting in a malleable plastic mass). Furthermore, the composition itself is subject to slight expressionistic plastic deformations, in a vibrant modeling of corporeal masses and a complex perception of space that presupposes a modern sculptural conception.

An artist originally from Galatone, where he was born in 1943, he graduated from Lecce and then attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Cherleroi, Belgium, where he worked as a designer for about ten years. In 1973, he won the Michelangelo d'Oro award. Around 1974, he developed the concept of "Metaarchaic Art," in which, rather than recovering the value of ancient images, the artist aims to revive them by exalting the material consistency on the canvas. His exhibition activity has developed especially since 1959, with several important national and international events, such as the 1992 World Expo in Seville and the exhibition at the Katsigra Museum in Larissa, Greece. His work has been discussed by prominent critics such as Vittorio Sgarbi and Gillo Dorfles.

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