Since the 1950s he has participated in the active development of experimental art both locally and nationally. In 1957 he helped organise itinerant show-debates on the new trends at the Galleria Fiamma Vigo, was part of the cooperative management of the Galleria Aquilone, at the centre for aesthetic research f/uno, and at the self-managed 'no-profit' section of Zona. In 1998, together with other artists active in Florence, he was one of the founders of the association Base for the promotion of contemporary art.
Always an exponent of abstract painting, since 2000 he has developed a new phase in his work, painting sheets of transparant plexiglass or glass, using the technique of paint spray, as in the work presented in the studio of Giuseppe Allerruzzo.
“It is not concealment of what has remained visible underneath. It is a stratification of what tends to emerge and become evident.
In making use of the layers, the surface draws together white, material, and chooses a transparancy that reaches further - underneath - that is endless, smashing through the wall, breaking through it, without violence. Concentrated observation, an accumulation of different rhythms: discovery and vibration, interpretation, the consolidation of tones, colours that seem, that are, that proclaim themselves and are part of everything, irreplaceable, necessary, progressive, absolute.
If the exterior is nothing, if it is unimaginable, if the exterior is uninhabitable, if the exterior cannot be changed, it must be reversed, only the white of the eye should be seen, the pupil upturned with its conscious knowledge on the other side, facing a pluridynamic, corpuscular infinity where the point of living and dying is found in the snarled expulsion that then explodes. There has never been a violence like it, no noise has been more deafening, no explosion so devastating. If the nucleus is split creating others, becoming contaminated, the result can only be an extreme and total beauty.” (Paolo Masi)
Paolo Masi was born in Florence, 1933, where he lives and works.
