Children through the eyes of the Argentine artist Francisco Masseria: expressive and realistic portraits

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

After centuries of art history, it is not easy for an artist to find himself and his own unique style, especially in order not to become someone else's copy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the era of the development of abstractionism, an Italian by origin Francisco Masseria (1926-2002) from the province of Enterre Rios (Argentina), managed to combine romantic realism with abstract expressionism in his work. The synthesis of these two trends in art formed the basis of the unique creative find of the talented artist, where the expressive method, reflecting the emotional state of the author and the realism of the portraits themselves, were intertwined into a single whole.

While still living with his parents in Argentina, Francisco, as a 13-year-old boy, began to paint in oils, without studying anywhere. And in Europe, where he soon moved with his parents, the talent of a painter fully manifested itself. The first works of the artist were portraits of children, however, like all subsequent ones, throughout the entire career.

When Royal Doulton, a well-known English porcelain company, released several decorative plates featuring Masseria's portraits of children, the world learned of his great talent and his work was sought after by collectors on every continent.

Creating portraits of children, the artist never painted from life. He allowed his creative imagination to create a unique image of a child on the canvas, filling it with spiritual and emotional content and a rich inner world.

And the master supplemented the general atmosphere of his canvases with the abstract-expressive method of depicting the background space, which magically bewitches, and, like a rainbow whirlwind, takes the viewer into the abyss of feelings and experiences that the artist himself experienced when creating his paintings.

In painting, images of children on the canvases of artists appeared only a few centuries ago. Although even before that some masters of the portrait genre tried to paint babies, these works resembled miniature copies of fairly adult people. After all, it is very difficult to convey curiosity, childish spontaneity, character traits and the look with which a child looks at the world. Francisco Masseria succeeded to the full, his portraits are unique and inimitable.

Children are so charming and spontaneous that you want to capture them and the joyful moments of their lives. For 15 years now he has been addressing this topic in his work Russian illustrator Viktor Nizovtsev, painting pictures with fairy-tale motives with images of children.