For the sculptor Gianfranco Meggiato, a true work of art is born when a person, in this case an artist, fights against the material, becoming a metaphor for life. The inner essence of each person is symbolized by a golden sphere which becomes a common thread within his artistic research.
With these words the artist Meggiato introduced himself to the art critic and curator dr Alain Chivilò within a cordial relationship that is still active today.
A constant artistic evolution has allowed Meggiato to assume the role of the most interesting Italian sculptor at an international level.
Gianfranco Meggiato (Venice 1963) studied sculpture in stone, bronze, wood and ceramics at the School of Art in Venice for five years. He exhibited his works at a very young age in two collective art exhibitions in 1979 and 1984 at the Galleria Comunale Bevilacqua La Masa in St. Mark Square, Venice, presenting stone and semi-refractory clay sculptures. Since 1998 Gianfranco Meggiato has participated in an uninterrupted series of exhibitions, shows and fairs in Italy.
Gianfranco Meggiato “My Sculpture” (from catalogue Energenesi and Gianfranco Meggiato Lugano 2010): You could almost call my work “introsculpture” from the way the viewer is drawn into the interior, rather than being limited to observing the other surfaces. On a formal level, space and light do not delimit the work, glancing off the surface as they do in conventional sculpture in the round: rather, they penetrate to the inside and wind their way round the tangled lattice, finally illuminating the centre (see sfera con sfera) as a virtual point of arrival. Or sometimes there is no sphere (see cubo tensione), or it cannot be found and then the eye loses itself in the organic networks in a diligent search for our most inward essence.
Man today focuses increasingly on external affirmation of himself and is less and less concerned with inner deep awareness and unwilling to undertake a journey into his most intimate nature in search of the meeting-point between energy and his own essence. In opposition to the ruling culture of appearances, of getting and spending, my sculptures offer another way: the way of being, or rather of becoming, through a long sometimes difficult but necessary process of inner growth, of liberation from conditioning, in search of ourselves. It is not important where we arrive, but it is important to seek, to form an honest relationship with ourselves of constant research and study, in which inevitably there will be times when we lose our way. This is the origin of the contrast between pure geometric from (the static point of departure) and the freedom and disorder of the network of internal tangles.
Michelangelo, in his unfinished work The prisoners reveals the suffering nature of man imprisoned by the material; the internal networks in my sculpture raise the theme of the tireless search of modern man: trapped by his own conditioning, he seeks himself and often feels lost and imprisoned. In my view, sculpture must retake possession of its deepest nature, as in ancient times. It must no longer limit itself to being a mere ornament, the product of an academicism, nor should it be simply applied philosophy. It must entail suffering for the artist in his endless guest and a slow process of mastering the techniques of his craft, almost an initiation, before he finally succeeds in giving concrete form to his work, as it little by little reveals itself to him. The ultimate challenge is the use of ancient materials and technologies (like the lost-wax casting of bronze), to indicate new ways and new emotions through abstracts forms.
“A free and subversive spirit” was how Vittorio Sgarbi described me in his book “Sgarbi’s opinions”: in my view the artist must go further, beyond negation, beyond facile antagonism and easy conformism to become, through his work, a driving force for man in the search for himself.
Gianfranco Meggiato is invited at 54th edition of La Biennale di Venezia 2011, in Costa Rica's Stupore exibition.
On 2012 the participation at LA Art Show in Los Angeles and New York Artexpo at Pier 92.
On 2013 the participation at 55. Venice Biennale, Supernatural, Bangladesh Republic Pavillion.
On 2017 the exhibition "Genesis" from 4/2 to 25/3 at the Scuola Nuova della Misericordia of Venice. Thanks to the F.lli Orler Gallery an exhibition with historical and recent works by Gianfranco Meggiato sculptor.
In recent years he has presented important installations in Italy and abroad.
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