Enrico Tomassi

About artist

Enrico Tomassi was born in Monte Castello di Vibio in 1948 and currently lives in Terni. From a young age, he developed a deep interest in the art of painting, which he cultivated in silence but never abandoned. Determined and enterprising, in 1990 he founded, together with three other artists, the pictorial movement of Introspectics (duly registered and officially recognized). Tomassi's artistic path evolved over time, leading him to Informal Abstractionism, a language that characterizes his art.

Enrico Tomassi's painting is, always, an act of deep introspection. As pointed out by many critics, his creative gesture responds to the need to protest against the transience of the human condition. His works, in fact, express a bursting force that opposes what appears ephemeral, while recognizing that the ephemeral is an integral part of the human experience, destined to be lived in its brevity. The attempt to explore and bring out the emotional experience is at the heart of the philosophy of the Introspectics, whose goal is not simply to make a “beautiful picture,” but to flesh out the complex world of the self through evocative images, sometimes satirical, sometimes symbolic, sometimes gory or enigmatic.

From 1984 to the present, Enrico Tomassi has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has held as many as 15 solo shows in different locations, including Umbria and Rome. He has received various art awards and his works have been published in important art catalogs. His most recent exhibitions include one entitled “Informal Abstractionism,” which opened on August 9, 2020 at the Teatro della Concordia in Monte Castello di Vibio, his hometown. On this occasion, one of Italy's best-known art critics, Vittorio Sgarbi, introduced the artist and discussed Contemporary Art. Sgarbi defined Tomassi's painting as a sensitive tool for the exploration of interiority, saying that <<Tomassi asks painting to help him probe his own self, a process that connects him not to a computer monitor, but to the deepest chords of the heart>>. He then noted how the artist explores primary structures of arcane suggestions, in which the dialectic between sign and color gives rise to an experimental order that defies canonical rules.

In his journey as an Introspective first and an Informal Abstractionist today, Enrico Tomassi embarks on one of the most extraordinary and surprising artistic adventures: that of getting to know himself. As he suggests, it is impossible to understand the vastness of the world without first exploring one's own body and psyche. Awareness of the inevitability of the end and the absence of inner energy in the future seems to permeate his work, which becomes an act of witnessing and investigating existence itself.