Massimo Pantani
Massimo Pantani was born in San Gimignano, Tuscany on 14th August 1956.
He is entitled and loves to define himself as a self-taught artist.
Massimo’s artistic career starts at an early age with oil painting and later progresses to the technique of watercolours.His instinctive brush-stroke is not inspired by any sophisticated concepts.
Oil paintings
It seems that when compared to the different currents of the figurative arts, this artist lives in an unusual dimension of reality, something calling him back from a very distant past, to a world which was so dear to impressionists and that he makes it revive today in a more personal and original way.
The painter Massimo Pantani uses moderately thick brushstrokes, but at the same time is full of secret brightness, with a precise drawing line,and surprisingly effective; his work does not seem to come out from intense reflections but from the extreme pleasure of creating a part in this world where everyone would like to live and where in an idyllic feeling, all distant romantic dreams.
His strokes are incisive certainly not mawkish and are to put in result the general scene rather than details. His style might seem unfinished because of the unworked brush-strokes and the final result may look as a sketch. Yet, a perceptive analysis recognises the non-necessity of a more define and precise trait.
The message is clearly given to the viewer who unconsciously becomes part of such landscapes.
This peculiar instinctiveness is indeed at its best when it comes to rocky landscapes. Those very landscapes which abound in Tuscany, are translated/interpreted in all their simplicity and b eauty in our artist’s works.
Alessandro Pantani
Alessandro Pantani was born in San Gimignano in 1961.
He attended the School of Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, graduating in 1985. In the same year he obtained a diploma in Theatrical Scenes Manufacturing issued by the Tuscany Region.
At the end of the 80s he started his activity in the family workshop where he has been creating hand-made frames adding his personal touch to the typical techniques of the Italian tradition.
His frames are unique pieces, each one designed and built according to customer's needs in order to enhance the work of art they go with. Alessandro has cooperated with many architects, interior designers, gallery owners and collectors. With his hands he creates excellent works, products for shops and private residences among the most exclusive in Italy and in the world.
A family passion
Alessandro Pantani, who lives and works in San Gimignano, carries on a family tradition, and that's the point: it is very important for him not to be called an artist, but a craftsman, and what a fine craftsman!
Within the family, with his father Gino, his brother Massimo and his sister Paola, Alessandro has breathed the atmosphere of the family workshop, growing up among picture frames and paintings. Every children took different studies, they had their own separate lives, but eventually they all have come back to their origins, into the family "workshop".
From the impressive vaulted workshop of so many years ago, originally located in Via Quercecchio, where even the old cobwebs were part of the medieval character of the place, now Alessandro creates his works in his new workshop in Via San Martino, that recalls part of the charming atmosphere of the ancient workshop of his old father.
Wood wall (and more) art
Some of his works are small "sculptural paintings", telling stories of pieces of wood he found on deserted beaches in winter.
Alessandro gives them a new poetic life and uses these polished pieces of wood modeled by the salt and the sand with other objects, such as old wood typefaces, to create elegant compositions and panels: inlaid landscapes of houses and castles, towers and hilltop towns.
A dream that takes form, a Lilliputian world limited in a space where the frame acquires its specific value.
Another recurring theme in the imagination of Alessandro is the hot-air balloon, which he repeats over time using a mixed technique comprising acrylics, collage, gilding and drawing: any means are justified to achieve the desired effect, which is to convey all the magic and mystery surrounding such a fascinating flying object.
You could say that the true subject of these paintings is amazement: the amazement felt at the sight of a hot-air balloon in the sky, the wonder when faced with such a strange and unexpected spectacle and the resulting sense of peace and reflection.