Critical Texts

“Beyond the most fashionable circles, Cubism remains an important reference — the first language truly able to keep pace with a contemporaneity regarded as an eternal present. This is the approach with which the Salentine Antonio Anastasia has paid homage to Cubism: respectfully yet anything but reverentially, reading it not as a final destination but as an intermediate stage from which to advance a new language, aware of a wholly respectable artistic background behind him. Undoubtedly a talent, given the manifold chromatic registers he manages to express across various surfaces — demonstrating, in his absolute expressive independence, a command of colour, which is the substance and root of life, through the innovative and almost mysterious technique of synthetic enamel.”

“A narrative kaleidoscope of surprising composition, with a variety of pictorial measures so diverse that they yield luminescent alternations — an interplay of reverberations, gleams and refractions that say everything about his technical preparation and descriptive skill. It is like watching a curtain rise to coloured polyphonic symphonies that recall, by analogy, the searching dialectic of Paul Klee. When his countless connotations build deep, intensely expressive framings, they unfold into a kind of dense informal magma that, liquefying and exploding, arranges colours in unusual, rare pairings — always governed by an intriguing and daring elegance.”

“While keeping his initial passion for Cubism, the artist developed, from the 1970s onward, a more instinctive and emotional technique. Reconnecting with Abstract and Informel painting, he creates works such as “Maremoto,” in which the skilful laying of synthetic enamels produces effects of almost naturalistic verisimilitude. The fusion of colours, left to pour over the panel, recalls the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock and William Congdon, while preserving a figurative memory that subtly emerges among the chromatic tones. The whirl of colour evokes flashes of light, splashes of water and stormy skies that lead the viewer toward places unknown yet familiar.”

“In his studio, crammed with enamels and canvases, he paints in the morning silence: just him, the room to move, the synthetic enamels and the surface on which to bring a thought to life through the movement and blending of colours, guided by the spatula and his fingers — yielding extraordinary chromatic effects impossible to achieve with a brush. His very personal Abstract Expressionism is a mix of Abstract, Informel, Dripping and Spatialism: he voices his unease at an ailing society, told solely through colour, without images, in complete freedom.”