Opening Saturday, Nov. 29, at 4:30 p.m. in the spaces of the Diocesan Museum in Massa is Oltre la trama, a new exhibition dedicated to Claudio Cargiolli (Ponzanello, 1952). The exhibition, which can be visited until January 11, 2026, promoted by theQuattro Coronati Association in collaboration with the Museum, presents a wide selection of works that allows to retrace a research that began in the 1970s and developed through a pictorial language that has become fully distinctive over time. The itinerary is accompanied by a critical text signed by Mauro Daniele Lucchesi and Alessandro Romanini, who analyze the formal and conceptual characteristics of the artist’s production. Cargiolli, a leading figure on the Tuscan scene, has built over the decades a recognizable visual vocabulary based on a combination of compositional rigor and openness to imagination. From his first exhibitions curated by Pier Carlo Santini to his most recent experiments, his practice has taken shape through a progressive refinement of internal structures that orient the reading of images. The architecture of his works recalls a method of construction that leaves no room for chance and invites the audience to an active fruition, beyond mere immediate perception.
“The composition enacted by Cargiolli,” explain Mauro Daniele Lucchesi and Alessandro Romanini, “is a skillful distillation of spatial and linguistic elements, a true cinematographic language. A work on depth of field (even when it seems to give up the articulation of planes and perspective depth in favor of two-dimensionality and visual flattening), which requires a refined ”internal editing“ based on the orchestration and choreography of characters, objects and natural elements. The exhibition itinerary also highlights the evolution of Cargiolli’s language: from the perspective solidity of his early works to the essentiality of his most recent works, in which two-dimensionality becomes a conscious choice that enhances the symbolic power of the images. A painting that, in its wealth of cultural references and Calvinian levity, vigorously reaffirms the vitality of the pictorial medium. An exhibition that offers the public a valuable opportunity to rediscover an artist whose work continues to surprise for its depth, compositional elegance and imaginative power.”
The exhibition emphasizes this mode of engagement, linked to the artist’s ability to create narrative devices that solicit the viewer. The painted surfaces present themselves as layered spaces, traversed by fragments, symbols and reminders that ask to be interpreted. The idea of a personal archaeology, evoked by Cargiolli, emerges from the relationship that the visitor establishes with elements scattered within the composition, each carrying potential narrative developments. The audience is thus invited to reconstruct individual paths from the traces disseminated in the pictorial scene. Beyond the Plot also highlights Cargiolli’s ability to blend geometric discipline and poetic momentum. Depth of field becomes a tool to articulate overlapping narrative planes, while visual intertextuality manifests itself through connections that can refer as much to Western tradition as to suggestions from Eastern miniature. The artist uses illusionary perspectives, decorative patterns and luminous diagonals as tools to guide the gaze, creating a path that unfolds dynamically within the depicted scene.
The layout of the compositions shows a constant dialogue between rationality and imaginative openness. The visual deviations, discontinuities and luministic variations do not have an ornamental function, but help determine the internal rhythm of the work and suggest a narrative progression that refers to theatrical or cinematic devices. The result is a painting that is placed in a dimension of formal balance, while leaving room for multiple interpretations and direct involvement of the viewer.
Originally from Ponzanello, a locality near Fosdinovo (Massa-Carrara) where he was born in 1952, Claudio Cargiolli trained at the Liceo Artistico and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, the city where he still resides and carries out his activity. From the very beginning of his career he has shown an open and independent approach, oriented to enhance imagination and visual invention, with a constant detachment from the fashions of the moment and a priority focus on the quality of pictorial making. Beginning in 1968, he took part in many exhibitions and held his first solo show in 1971.
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| An exhibition in Massa investigates the pictorial language of Claudio Cargiolli |
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