RENAISSANCE WORKSHOP

STVDIO D'ARTE
SANDRO BECVCCI

SANDRO (PTOLEMÆUS)

BECVCCI

STVDIO D'ARTE

After more than 20 years I once again have a Lab-Studio-Gallery at my disposal where I can work with all those means and techniques used throughout a life dedicated to the visual arts, bringing together in a single physical, mental and spiritual space what first with “I Maschereri Atelier” for over 30 years, then with painting alone for many others, has always been my vocation for the visual and I would also say scenic arts.

For the layout of this “not only physical” space, I took aesthetic and functional inspiration from the Renaissance Workshop, dividing the space into three areas with different functions.

Two large projections on the street make two different spaces clearly visible. The GALLERY serves as an entrance and permanent exhibition; it communicates with the other space visible from the street: the STUDIO of painting, design, drawing and applied arts. From both spaces you can access the LABORATORY located at the back and equipped for sculpture and modelling, forming of moulds and negatives; support work such as carpentry and metalwork; decoration, warehouse and finally TEACHING : courses of various kinds on papier-mâché techniques. In this place I can make my heart, head and hands work together; here emotion, design and executive technique meet to merge into the finished work. I believe that without all three of these elements there is neither art nor an artist.

In the Renaissance there was no concept of artist as we understand it today, …

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1978: Borgo Pinti workshop: at work modelling Pantalone's mask in clay

WHY I MAKE ART

WHY CAN'T I DO ANYTHING BUT THIS? If I think back to how my life could have gone if a force, my Daimon, had not always guided me, orienting and correcting my choices, I would probably have had to do a common job to which (I knew since I was young) I would absolutely not have been able to adapt and resist. Instead, fate has wanted that in practice the "work" almost always coincides with the inestimable privilege of being able to do what my heart dictated: visual arts and music, cultivating my passions. This has been an immense fortune.

I believe I have been a pioneer in the fields, times and places in which I have operated. Obviously there have been periods of crisis, temporary confusion, but in essence the things I have undertaken have been successful and have always allowed me to live not by bread alone, as long as they were fueled by passion. When this failed, it was never possible for me to continue only for the money, even if I must say, I tried!

My parents, who were not exactly humble but certainly not wealthy, for better or for worse, gave me everything I needed, and it was an immense legacy for which I will be eternally grateful.

After some emblematic episodes already in kindergarten, during elementary school a formidable and far-sighted teacher greatly favored my inclination for the performing, visual and musical arts; then there was the clear “Call of the Daimon”, a Revelation, an Epiphany! During a matinée at the Teatro La Pergola organized around Christmas for the 5th graders, when the lights went out, the noise stopped, in the absolute darkness you could hardly hear the rustle of the curtain opening… then, little by little, many colored lights began to light up, sets that left me breathless. I had never seen anything like it, there was a kitchen perfectly scenic, with a hood from which the Befana was supposed to come down… I was enchanted, I would say in ecstasy! I was filled with joy for that spectacle. I immediately wanted to be the owner, builder and creator of such beauty; I wanted to be the creator of the magic of the theater, of the sets, lights, costumes, puppets and marionettes! I ran home like a madman to look for paper, cardboard, colors and scissors and I reproduced in miniature and in three dimensions what I had seen in the theater. It must have been January 1967 or 68 and less than 10 years later my dream was already coming true.

Only with time did I become aware that from that moment my Daimon guides and governs my choices, my mistakes, my tastes, my dreams and needs. He will then guide me through the various “random” circumstances of life, sometimes creating them himself; even now! with the choice to reopen an art studio after 20 years of apparent but industrious quiescence.

Like many colleagues, but not all, I am someone who believes in the craft and daily work as the truest source of inspiration, indispensable for finding the aesthetic canon necessary to express the most varied intellectual, spiritual and emotional themes.

With ups and downs between materialism and spiritualism, between horizontal life and vertical life, the project of “Le Sante Sospese” takes shape little by little and finally is born, which in reality was at the same time a slow and progressive approach towards a spiritual path that between 2015 and 2018 resulted in the adherence to meditative practices, studies and daily reflections, temporarily interrupting my painting until the beginning of 2021.

SANDRO (PTOLEMÆUS) BECVCCI

PAINTING

Since I was a child I have always been fascinated by the fact that someone could create images with their hands that seemed real. I would remain enchanted for hours in front of paintings and drawings, fascinated and admired by what I sensed was an unattainable technical expertise typical of a very few and chosen virtuosos. In the context of my career as a mask maker, over time I have tried my hand not only at modeling but also at painting images to integrate with the art of making masks and decorative panels in papier-mâché.

Towards the end of the 90s I began to devote myself more to pure painting, no longer functional to masks or their peculiar iconography. In this period I did not set limits and explored every technical and aesthetic direction, from material and relief painting to the use of very smooth and refined acrylics and oil. Giant portraits of friends or musicians; reproductions of Renaissance masters, urban and rural landscapes. Finally, from 2025 onwards I dedicated myself to a project that over time will take shape and name: Le Sante Sospese" (The pending "Sante"), a series of images at the center of which stands the female nude symbolically set in a spiritual, sometimes esoteric space.

A nostalgic lover of Greco-Roman classicism, I take the pseudonym of Ptolemaios (PTOLEMÆUS or PtolemaioV) with which I sometimes sign my paintings. For the pictorial style I tried to draw inspiration from Caravaggio as much as possible. This cycle was also in some way a path of spiritual knowledge and meditation.

Alongside this painting I have occasionally experimented with other genres. Urban landscapes , Rural landscapes and Sunsets on a gold background , a research on the light effects of sunsets and their reflections in images of more or less realistic landscapes. Paintings with various techniques, oil and/or acrylic, with urban glimpses of city traffic; sometimes, for sunsets in the countryside, also with a gold leaf background, used as a full color or as a background on which to paint in transparency creating a luminous color effect. Like all landscapes, they try to capture a particular moment that creates a poetic suspension in the mind of the viewer. In some cases inventions and modifications of reality are made at a chromatic and formal level, precisely to enhance this poetic effect.

Cinetic Torsos is a purely aesthetic and decorative project, which however does not lack its own peculiar poetics.

These are female nudes made with mixed techniques, very fresh and fast, which omit the face and focus on the plastic movements of the body. They are aimed at transmitting the idea of the movement of a female human body, trying to portray it in a dynamic pose.

Still lifes and trompe l'oeil . Some reproductions of ancient art .

1978: as I lay the layers of papier-mâché in a plaster cast and then the freshly dried mask, taken out of the cast and cut out.

I MASCHERERI

Maschereri or Mascareri is the name of the ancient Venetian corporation of mask makers that was incorporated into that of the Painters. When the latter in 1683 broke away to form their own exclusive “Art”, the Mascareri joined other craftsmen such as Cartoleri who made playing cards, Dipintori, Designers, Coridoro, who decorated and gilded leather goods, Miniatori and Indoratori who gilded with pure gold leaf and also fake gold.

It was 1976 when I chose this name and designed the brand as a distinctive sign of my artistic and theatrical masks. The actual company was founded in 1978 and closed in 1996. But I have always continued to make unique pieces on order as a free artist. Today the registered trademarks I MASCHERERI FIRENZE and I MASCHERERI ATELIER can live again in this Art Studio.