VITTORIO MATINO

Italian artist Vittorio Matino has produced vibrantly colored abstract paintings for the past forty years. His exceptional use of luminous color, which radiates from the canvas as pure energy and his wide chromatic scale are informed by his investigations of the Venetian School while living in the Veneto region of Italy during his formative years. 

 

The discovery of foreign cultures has been a pressing necessity and has helped liberate him from the weight of Italy’s long and rich artistic tradition. The thrust—and the challenge—of Matino’s practice is the dissolution of cultural boundaries. He has traveled extensively, studying Asian and African art and deepening his connection to American Action Painting and Color Field abstraction.

 

His formal investigations, though firmly rooted in the Italian Color Field School, are also informed by aspects of Eastern philosophy, such as the dissolution of the ego, and by a long fascination with the color traditions of the Subcontinent. Neither expressionistic nor purely geometric in approach, his formal framework is distinctly his own. Not only has Matino extended the language of the Italian Color Field School but he has also expanded our understanding of color.

 

Matino has exhibited extensively throughout Italy, in Rome, Milan, Naples, Bologna, Venice, Verona, Vicenza and Padoua. He has had solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, North America and Australia, including Paris and Nice, France; Zürich and Locarno, Switzerland; Krefeld, Frankfurt am Main and Bonn, Germany; Vienna; London; New York; Montreal and Sydney. Matino has had solo exhibitions in numerous museums and public spaces, including Museo Civico, Palazzo Chiericati, Vicenza; Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Galleria Civica, Villa Valle, Valdagno; Palazzo Pretorio, Cittadella; and Museo Civico di Brunico, Italy.

 

In 1997, Matino created a 14-meter mosaic for the Bologna metro station in Rome as part of the Art Metro Roma project. His work is in the collections of major Italian museums and corporations, including Museo del Novecento, Intesa Sanpaolo Galleria d’Italia, the Prada Foundation and Edison, Milan; and Enimont, New York. 

 

Born in Tirana, Albania, 1943| Lives and works in Milan