Ottavio Giacomazzi’s Works at Castello di Malcesine Exhibit

Nineteen works by Ottavio Giacomazzi at the Castello di Malcesine. No place could be more suitable for a solo exhibition by the painter from Melsa, Ottavio Giacomazzi, than the Castello, a place he loved dearly, though sadly he passed away prematurely last year.

The exhibition, which will be set up in the Sala Labia and will run from Saturday the 3rd (with the opening at 6 pm) until June 30, is, due to spatial constraints, more of a tribute than a comprehensive retrospective. It briefly traces the most significant moments of his artistic activity.

It is not an extensive retrospective requiring a larger number of paintings but rather a documentation of a specific period. The exhibited works are a survey that spans the different phases of Giacomazzi’s research, from 1960 to 1997.

Giacomazzi’s artistic journey

The painter from Melsa, who studied in Stuttgart with Manfred Henninger, was better known and appreciated abroad than in Italy. Nonetheless, many of Italy’s leading critics have engaged with his paintings; among them are Giuseppe Marchiori, Gillo Dorfles, Giorgio Cortenova, Enrico Mascelloni, and Alberto Lui.

The inspiration that this artist drew from his homeland was fundamental. “For Giacomazzi,” writes Elena Pontiggia in the catalog, “the lake was especially appealing as a chromatic repertoire, an inexhaustible invention of tones and colors. It was for him a vast palette that never ceased to surprise him. He particularly liked the landscape’s instability, the water which thus becomes an existential metaphor, a symbol of our fading.”

Themes and techniques in Giacomazzi’s works

The artist thus takes from nature and life a sense of precariousness and brevity, transferring it into his works: “There was something in his marks,” Pontiggia continues, “that always subtly alluded, in a tentative manner, to the passage of time, to the fact that our lives are crossed by death. For this reason, his preferred materials were mainly papers, which he could tear, then mend, like wounds still open.”

The use of Japanese papers becomes essential for this reason; Giacomazzi tears, rips, overlays, and colors them, creating something material that simultaneously evokes the sense of an existence beyond the physical surface of the work.