PAOLO CAMAETI
PAINTER
Biography
Paolo was born in Cesena (Romagna) in 1950 and since he was a child he developed a sincere attraction for painting. In fact, while he spent hours in the family glass factory, he has been observing master artisans drawing and decorating the glass by hand. Glass and color therefore immediately became an indissoluble combination, two passions that will guide him in parallel to his artistic and working maturity: during the day he was a manager in the glassworks, at night a painter.
Since he was a boy he has been drawing incessantly and experimenting as a self-taught with oil colours, chalks and charcoals, distinguishing himself at just 14 yo even within the college he attended, in which he won the first prize in the Villa Fietta painting competition in Crespano del Grappa (Treviso) in 1964. Subsequently, accompanied by the sculptor and painter Ilario Fioravanti, he enrolled in a competition to enter the artistic high school in Florence, but it was the autumn of 1966, the year of the terrible flood, and it was canceled: destiny seemed to have different plans for him. After attending the technical institute for surveyors in Forlì, he started working full time in the family business continuing to paint at night. However he was increasingly dissatisfied, even destroying almost all his works, until the end of the 70s when he discovered acrylic colours and started painting on wood.
For Paolo, acrylic discover was a shock, through which he managed to define himself in an intimate dialogue between colours and shapes: a completely personal style that still accompanies him today, even if always in constant evolution. The 80s are the years of his first personal exhibitions: in Cesena in 1982 and 1984, in Milan in 1985 and 1988, in Meldola (Romagna) in 1988 and 1992, up to the most recent exhibitions of 2009 in Cesena and Forte dei Marmi (Tuscany). He lives and paints in his studio in Cesena.
In the critics view
Mostly hidden angles
“…Camaeti is a difficult painter in the sense that he is demanding with himself and at the same time very simple in his expressions. Although he is cautious in speaking of himself, he is too cautious in speaking of his production. And he is right: the work of art does not need explanations. It is self-explanatory. But the intricate figures, the violent colours or the ancestral apparitions of Camaeti require more attention, more reflection. At first glance it may seem abstract, or surrealist or even informal painting. Instead, carefully dosing, it is a realistic and figurative painting that, using the symbols of the signs and the vivid-visual immediacy of color, speaks of man and his “visions”. They are humanoid figures or patches of matter that flaunt interpretative forms of today’s world still in emotional evolution. Camaeti’s modernity lies precisely in knowing how to grasp its most hidden and most significant corners and situations, just like a new Gauguin.”
Davide Argnani, 1983
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We are all of us
"Paolo’s painting is essentially the revelation of the artist, understood as an individual: the technique he uses is, in fact, adherent to his character traits. A drawing always executed quickly, without second thoughts, made up of a few essential lines, deliberately renouncing shadows or chiaroscuro and resorting to perspective only if strictly necessary.
The colours, then, never take over and their use is always discreet and classy. On the contrary, the subjects represented are mysterious, complex and hardly decipherable, but as it should be: they are, in fact, born from the mixing of life experiences, fragments of dreams never finished, of the very complex impulses of any daily life, even the most banal. And so it is necessary to look at Paolo’s painting, pausing in front of his paintings and abandoning oneself to the first and immediate emotion, enjoying it without making an effort to go further: because then, inside there, even if we do not recognise ourselves immediately, we are all of us.
Antonio Agostini, 2006