Criticisms from books and catalogs

ITA  ITALIANO

On this page you can scroll and read the criticisms and reviews on the artistic work of Andrea Benetti and on the events of contemporary art, which he has conceived and created in recent years. The text starts with a hint and mention of the author and you can read it entirely by clicking on "Read all".

Colors and Sounds from the Origins
The technique an artist employs is never neutral nor indifferent. On the contrary, it carries impressive weight in influencing content or the “what” that one is attempting to express.
Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic phrase “the medium is the message” rings particularly true in Andrea Benetti’s painting. Like in the ancient Byzantine mosaics or in medieval paintings, Benetti’s figures are radically flattened on the surface...
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Silvia Grandi - Professor and researcher in Contemporary Art Phenomenology
DAR – (Dept. Of Visual, Performance and Media Arts) - University of Bologna

 
The power of imagery. Andrea Benetti’s neograffittism
Gombrich dedicates the opening pages of his essential work The Story of Art to the paintings discovered in the nineteenth century in the caves of Altamira, Spain, and in Lascaux, southern France, which represent the tribal origin of the incredible history of Western art. Art is a long and articulated linguistic journey that since the beginning of the last century has undertaken significant detours...
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Massimo Guastella – Professor of History of Contemporary Art
Scientific director of labTasc - University of Salento - Lecce


So far and yet so near
VR60768 is the identification code of a rare Paleolithic artifact, but for the nonexpert of archeology this alphanumerical sequence might appear to be a “string”; a digital genetic code that can transmit any number of data like, a program, a piece of music or a movie uploaded to the internet; actually, it could be an entire multimedia encyclopedia where different media meld together into an overwhelming knowledge experience...
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Giuseppe Virelli - Didactic tutor
University of Bologna, Department of the Arts


Benetti’s Neo Cave Painting
In this article, I’ll address Benetti’s invention of and specific style of Neo Cave Art; a pictorial concept that gave way to a manifesto that he presented at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
At first reading of the manifesto we see that Benetti has constructed a totally new formula, even though it is evident that his work is a mutation of the marvelous cave paintings of thirty to forty thousand years ago...
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Gregorio Rossi – Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Italian Art of America
Curator of the "Nature and Dreams" Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale


Andrea Benetti: the Neo Cave Panting
Andrea Benetti’s “Neo Cave Art” is not painted on rocks nor on rocky cave walls: it is painted on canvas. So don’t expect an artist with roughened, callused hands, armed with hammer and chisel, sweating and covered with chips and dust. At worst, you might catch him with a few spots of oil, or splashed with henné or paint.
So “Neo Cave Art” is a sort of fiction, the kind in which– to paraphrase Gorgia – those who let themselves be fooled are all the wiser...
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Dario Scarfì – Siracusa Municipality – Department of Cultural Policy and UNESCO
Coordinator “Sicily” Pavilion – 54th Venice Biennale


Art and ornaments: at the origin of symbolic communication
When and how the Mankind began to manifest symbolic behavior, to transmit knowledge, a specific perception of the world through symbols, signs and artistic performances? These questions have challenged philosophes, anthropologists, sociologists and those interested in Cognitive Sciences. Yet, only a limited category of scientists, namely archeologists and paleoanthropologists dealing with the oldest humans ancestors from southern Africa, Europe, Eastern Asia and Australia, provided an answer. While the earliest and modest artistic expressions by archaic sapiens are currently limited to the...
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Marco Peresani  – University of Ferrara, Department of Humanistic Studies


Emerging signs
Having written about Andrea Benetti’s works for other expositions – I have had occasion to point out how his subjects relate to archaic artistic forms – connected to a pictorial-expressive modality that takes us back to the contexts of primitive or pre-modern artists where the world of realism and phenomena, rich in icastic and descriptive details disappears, and leaves way to simplified iconic symbolism. Often in his paintings we find ambiguous figures that bring to mind forms of objects and utensils that are caught between an archaic past that implode almost all the way back to the origin of man and a hyper-technological future where things and people are transfigured in symbolic...
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Silvia Grandi – Professor and researcher in Contemporary Art Phenomenology
DAR – (Dept. Of Visual, Performance and Media Arts) - University of Bologna


The force of symbols
The first time I saw Andrea Benetti’s artwork, I was struck by how much energy that kind of bas-relief painting produced, as it intelligently and carefully manipulates the very origin of painting, that is, cave painting.
The figures on the canvas can act as isolated symbols; items in an archaeological catalogue, or they can be included in a dynamic context that brings them to life, as if to animate them and give them meaning that goes beyond their symbolic value...
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Sabrina Collina – Indipendent curator

 

Grotta di Fumane and the origin of art in Italy
Cave art appears fully mature since its earliest manifestation. At Chauvet as well as in other caves in Western Europe, large panels with representation of felines, horses, deers and pachyderms of the Ice Age (mammoths and wholly rhinos) were drawn on the walls and enlightened with torches to create suggestive games of shadows and lights. Besides the famous polychrome paintings of Lascaux and Altamira caves, repeatedly admired and cited by Pablo Ruiz Picasso, the earliest art is also characterized by stylized traits, marks, engravings and the renowned…
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Marco Peresani and Matteo Romandini 
Università di Ferrara, Department of Humanistic Studies