Masin Mauro

Born in Valdobbiadene, on July 18th, 1989, Masin demonstrated interest and ability in drawing, technical drawing in particular, from a very young age. However, he approached paintings at the age of eighteen, while he was attending a technical high school in Montebelluna. From that moment, paintings became an increasingly important element in his life. He enrolled at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Padua, which he attended for three years. Afterwards, he interrupted his studies without pursuing the degree, to dedicate himself solely to painting.

The realism of Mauro Masin, Italian self-taught painter born in 1989, is extremely unique both for his representative choices, both for his style and his creations. There are some constants, in Masin’s artworks, which allow even to the most distracted observer to recognize one of his artworks, even before seeing his signature on the bottom corner of the canvas: on the foreground some figures, very often girls or women alone, abandoned from the world; in the background a landscape, typically houses or buildings which give the canvas a refined symmetry entirely Masinian.  Then, lights and shadows thicken and highlight the details; finally, there is the silence, clearly painted by Masin as if it were a person or an entity, a figure in all paintings which is always the same and always different. And even if it is the less evident detail, the less articulated, the silence painted by Masin is certainly the clearest and most direct detail, the one that leaves no doubts to the observer. It is the truest silence, the most real one: that one accompanied by the rustle of the sea waves, by the reverberation of cars whizzing down the street at night or by the distant chatter of people or the chirping of birds. His silence reaches the eyes of the observer as if it had a shape and a color, a name and a place. However, in Masin's penetrating chiaroscuro, among plays of symmetries and lights, it is the only detail that has no shape and no color.

Masin's realism is in what he draws, but it is even more alive in what he does not draw. Masin's realism is in the canvas, but then it comes to you at home: suddenly the corner of your house is no longer just a corner of your house, a glimpse of your town is no longer just a glimpse: after seeing a painting by Masin, that place you have always known becomes one of his painting and right there you see a lonely figure, motionless, who tries to preserve a thought that otherwise would disappear forever. It is the kind of realism of when we savor the clean mountain air with a single breath, or that of a warm summer night, of when we try to feed a sensation that is only in that instant and therefore must be protected with religious silence. And Masin creates and protects it first.

As Masin declares, his art is inspired by the American painter Edward Hopper, primarily for the choice of light and chiaroscuro, for the figures and the landscapes, which seem to recall the taste of the American painter as well.  

In Masin's work there is no clear reference to the typical Italian landscape: his places could be in Africa, America or Europe; his figures have no place and no time, they wait there, motionless, for what is most sacred in life: a moment of solitude, authentic, true.
 
Masin's artworks have no interpretations, they are not ambitious; they are neither rowdy, nor vulgar. Masin’s works do not want to scream anything new to the world. They do not yell; rather, they whispers. All the observer has to do is to look, or better to listen. And perhaps, as if by magic, just like when we as kids put our ear to a shell and we heard the sound of the sea without understanding the reason, the observer will be able to hear the muffled and remote noise of an intimate place, a place of solitary moments and extraordinary freedom.