Papaveri Colonna Toscana
16" x 48" 28" x 22"
M A S S I M O C R U C I A N I
Papaveri
Colonna Toscana
16" x 48"
28" x 22"
Umbria Papaveri
Colonna Toscana
Toscana Girasoli
18" x 24"
28" x 22"
18" x 24"
Teti Con Nevi
Toscana Con Paraveri
Toscana Girasoli II
12" x 16" 27"
x 39"
16" x 20"
Papaveri
Blu Toscana Papaveri
Rossi
San Francisco
24" x 16"
24" x 12" 16"
x 12" 28"
x 22"
All paintings are oil on glass.
"Massimo Cruciani was born in 1946 in Rome of an
Umbrian father and it is in Umbria that his restless wanderings will conclude
many years later.
At twenty, he was already a
professional photographer. His tenacity in the transformation of a black and
white image age into a photographic painting, fruit of countless passages and
elaborations and hours passed in a darkroom, was an act of painting without
paintbrushes, an experimentation incorporating avant-garde techniques with a
fantasy eager to embrace spaces beyond the ordinary.
During this first phase, determinant in
creating the foundation for future artistic development, he was a set
photographer at Cinecitta (1967-1968, first and second series of the RAI
television production, "La Famiglia Benvenuti" of A. Giannetti.) and then
photoreporter travelling around the world: in Asia for nearly a year (1969) and
then in the U.S.A. from 1970 to 1971 where he worked in the photographic studio
of Maurice Seymour of Chicago.
Whenever work became
routine, restlessness surfaced that inexhaustible taste for life and Cruciani
would leave once more for new experiences.
1972 was spent in Mexico
and Canada and in 1973, he was in Rome once again for the news agency "Master
Photo".
Since 1974 Cruciani has
been in Umbria where paintbrushes have taken the place of the camera. After an
intensive apprenticeship in the studio of the painter G. Adami, he has moved
from oils to acrylics to watercolors and then to painting on glass.
The misty-toned colors,
the indefinite forms, the transparency of the medium, which permits continuous
variations of light and shadows: this is the magic which succeeds in casting a
spell on "the ever-present restless searching".
Since his debut at the
"Festival of the Two Worlds" of Spoleto in 1976 (Galleria "La Legnaia " of Clara
del Re), Massimo Cruciani has passed this past twenty years with growing
enthusiasm in his continuous, insatiable search, a self-defined "craftsman of
color", never tired of playing in that realm where finally he could totally
unite fantasy with experimentation, reality with dream.
Massimo Cruciani has
participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions both in Italv and
abroad.
In 1978 and 1979, he
taught trimester courses in painting on glass and stained glass at the
University of Northern Colorado Italian Center at Figline Valdarno (Tuscany).In
1995, thirty- four of his paintings on glass were presented in the book
"Francesco di Assisi" of A. Cioci edited by Italcomm.
In the autumn of 1996, he
was entrusted by Padre Cojacaru Gheorglie with the task of realising all the
windows for the new "Basilica Catolica" of BACAU in Romania, and these were both
completed and installed in July, 1997.
In spring of the same
year, hosted by the Consulate General of Lugano, he presented a touring
exhibition of his personal work "Assisi in Ticino", with 90 original paintings
on glass on show in the principal cities of Switzerland.
Massimo Cruciani was
received by Pope John Paul II on the 15th October, 1997, and donated to him one
of his paintings on glass titled "Francesco".
Since 1981 he has lived
and worked in Assisi "where it is possible to meet the world without going out
of the studio".
Craftsman of color.
Citizen of the world."
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