Marcello Silvestri is an artist who always worked in conscious solitude in the visceral heart of his Etruscan land under the evocative light of his studio in the hills. He took inspiration from his favourite themes, which evolved inspired by and in harmony with the seasons and the solar cycle. An artist of primordial signs and alchemical strength, he is the author of works that filter and sublimate cosmic forms, ancestral symbols, pagan cultures, the harmony of chromatic signs and the emotional intensity of spontaneous geometry with his seeming abstractions.
Silvestri's works belong to the biological process of natural materials, remodelled in their fragmentary detachment from their places of origin, so as to belong to a pictorial process that follows the harmonious cycle of the seasons. Each element is taken by the artist in an incessant recovery of nature that changes skin, colour, size, shape ...Silvestri listens to the silent sounds that the materials evoke, captures their cellular instinct and their pictorial destiny. He takes those fragments that contain the magical potential of (re) composition, of iconographic harmonies, of the balance between empty and full, light and dark, smooth and rough, compactness and fibrousness…
Nature is the metaphysical theme that unifies the entirety of the artist’s work. It is never a question of a didactic access to the landscape, on the contrary - everything passes through the grammar of seeming abstractions, within informal material that burns and dries, within a liberated geometry that reshapes the logic of the gaze. The references - never to be taken for granted - to Alberto Burri, Afro, Toti Scialoja and Osvaldo Licini, are inspiring traces left by this heritage, and implicit thrusts that one sees upon re-visiting the works now as part of the cycle of a long career. In Marcello Silvestri's anthological journey we find materials that have undergone the pressure of time and the consumption of space, becoming archaeologies of the natural landscape; traces and footprints that metabolise similarities in a personal pictorial pentagram.
Gianluca Marziani, art critic, 2021
This is an original path: new thought; new grammar; new school; new elegance.
Philippe Daverio, art critic, 2019
Silvestri's vast, well-versed, finely-curated, multi-material productions - the first examples of which date back to 2006 - represent a further moment of reflection on man, on his being in this land and on the role that beauty assumes in this context.
Stefania Severi, art critic, 2010
I admire this meditative and cosmic richness.
Cardinale Carlo Maria Martini, Archbishop of Milano, 1989
The themes and content [of many of Marcello's works] are religious, but their artistic treatment is not "holy" or "sacred", in the sense that their purpose is not the promotion of religion, but the growth of the human. This growth refers to that "vital energy" that is the Artist’s aim, which he would like to see spring from the contemplation of his paintings. Which on the one hand, are linked to creation as found in its concreteness and earthy materiality (with all its treasures, evident and hidden), the sea (with its infinite riches of life) and the sky with its firmament populated by countless worlds, as many as there are stars that have been shining there since time immemorial. Whilst on the other hand, this materiality of creation is read and described by a gaze, that of the Artist, who I would gladly define as mystical, always intent on not stopping at the appearance and surface of things and phenomena, but going further to seek and discover their hidden meaning, which the hasty eye cannot grasp. In short, Marcello's is a spiritual reading of matter, and this reading is the spirituality of an art that is "not holy".
Paolo Ricca, theologian, professor and Waldensian Pastor, 2022
Silvestri is exactly the type of artist that the Church needs today, an artist who knows how to transfer the invisible world into accessible, intelligible formulas, to entice the Word’s treasures and adorn them with colours, shapes and accessibility.
Silvestri's meditation draws inspiration from the spirituality and symbolism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is an expression of time, but also a revelation. The true genesis is, in fact, Man who works, creates, transforms and goes beyond; a hermeneutic of hope that asks Man not to resign himself, but to "actively launch himself" into the present. Silvestri’s artistic will is truly an expression of the history of mankind as he goes forth to meet himself, it is a prophetic capacity to grasp the irrepressible search for meaning.
Claudia Caneva, docente di Estetica, Università Roma Tre e Pont.Univ. Lateranense, 2023
Art that is strong and intense and touches the soul’s chords, because it is from the soul that it springs forth like a river. The threads that bind the various works of Marcello are woven together with the Holy Scriptures and with Christian, Jewish and other religious traditions. Spirituality becomes art.
Lia Beltami, director and documentary maker, 2022
I like to describe Silvestri as one of those storytellers who gathered the simple and candid people (not highly educated) in the town square in the days before media screens devoured them. One who never tires of inviting us, with generous obstinacy, to relive a few moments of that sacred history which, under the guise/ appearance of the fantastical, proposes anew the deepest truths that influence human salvation, beyond the delight given to the imagination.
Marcello Camilucci, writer, 1999
A glimpse of light in these dark times, Marcell’s work overflows with a love of life, with the image of creation, with both joy and suffering: art as hope.
Cardinale Paul Poupard, Pontificio Consiglio per la Cultura, 1984
Marcello Silvestri's compositions generally have a centrality which is the fulcrum of the message and favours symbolic means or at least alludes strongly to symbols[...] On the contrary, he loves the symbol in its true etymological sense, that is, the means that "brings together" (symbol from the Greek sumballo put together, to unite) different realities, even at times opposites, assigning to them a higher value; a symbol in which to identify and find oneself, even in the singularity of individual experiences; a symbol that helps to "make sense" in our time in which the question of meaning is widespread and in which, conversely, in the visual arts even "nonsense" can take on the guise of the poetic. This is not something that only concerns believers, artists or non-artists. The terrain of values that are needed to hold a society together and to make communities grow, is very large, it needs to be cultivated by everyone and it is crucial that there are no barriers between faith and reason.
Giuseppe Magini, architect, 2005
We have before us an artist who is living his maturity. He has reached the pinnacle through research, for which he was not afraid to leave his own certainties behind in order to arrive at his artistic truth. […] The simplicity conquered by the artist is the culmination of detailed research told through his works.
A poet of colours who is not afraid to change course, steer towards new shores, venture into roads untravelled, who can courageously be reborn with new appearances, continue to research and study, whilst still remaining faithful to his own identity.
[…] He has done it with courage and determination and with a big dose of madness, that madness which at the same time nourishes Art.
Francesco Pierotti, Jazz Musician, 2021
A soul open to every human expression [Marcello] hides a whole world behind his brotherly humility. A beautiful human person who has consumed his whole life in the passionate attempt to leave God's communicative mark for future generations. His playful child-like eyes strive to see life, to "feel" life, to reinvent colours and human existence in a tridimensional form on a piece of wood
fr Giosy Cento, musician, singer and song-writer, 2021
Marcello’s work is a real and true sharing of the beauty and strength of the Living Word of God when we humbly, honestly engage with It. Thank you Marcello for your work, the loving fruit of your living faith!
sr Mary Louise Winters, fsp, 2022
Thank you for this service to Beauty!
Aldo Giordano, Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union, 2015
A clean, incisive, accomplished stroke. A natural chromatism, with archaic knowledge, mixed more with moods, with the power of life, than with colours, but also with melancholy, resignation and anger. This is the essence of Marcello Silvestri, a master since his early work. His art is a powerful fresco, which emerges from its clear signs and colours, in which present, past and future blend perfectly: from the yellow of an inhuman and malarial sun, to the purples of an endangered countryside, to the glacial ones without hope of tomorrow.
In this ebbing and flowing of times and sensations, made natural by a complex but instinctive technique, a world without limits emerges, where man becomes the artifice of his pain, his resignation, his joy. The pulsating humanity of curved backs, bent faces, sketched hands, aching feet blends with the bursting sensuality of nudes born out of nowhere.
Everything in Silvestri is magic born of nature, out of time, out of space, out of death. Suffered, harsh, deep within him there is only life, like a song of hope.
Filippo Anastasi, journalist, 1993
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| Magini e Silvestri, Roma, novembre 2005
| Anastasi e Silvestri, Roma, novembre 2005
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| Silvestri, Ricca, Poupard, Anastasi, Roma, novembre 2005
| Daverio e Silvestri, Tarquinia, agosto 2019
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| Marziani, Silvestri e Conticiani, Tarquinia, luglio 2021
| Silvestri e Beltrami, Roma, maggio 2022 |