10 Questions with Samanta Masucco
Samanta Masucco is an Argentinian artist who builds her artworks from contemplation, dialogue, and interaction with nature and socio-cultural reality. She began her studies of art at a very young age. She graduated from the National University of Arts (UNA - Argentina) and is currently developing her thesis for the postgraduate degree in Combined Artistic Languages at the same institution. She works as a painter, visual artist, and Fine Arts Professor with twenty years of experience. She exhibits her artworks in individual and collective exhibitions, and she is passionate about directing and carrying out projects with interdisciplinary groups of artists.
Samanta Masucco Portrait
ARTIST STATEMENT
In her works, Samanta Masucco explores the intimate encounter of elements, cycles, and poetics. She uses paintbrushes, colors, and textures as creationist instruments of the visual gesture, so then they grow in an abstraction, hugging other expressionist techniques. In her works, we find force and determination, movement and sound. The use of black and white intertwines as a contrast of living matter and emptiness in an organic and free meeting. The colors are light, as a life impulse—expectant figures of transformation.
Night, Oil on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2020 © Samanta Masucco
INTERVIEW
When did you start experimenting with painting, and when did you decide to become an artist?
I always knew art was my path. I have painted since before I can remember. Like other artists, I started painting when I was very little, and since my early childhood, I showed a pretty clear and defined calling. Most of my memories include pencils, colors, and brushes. When I was 6, I started studying drawing and painting at different art workshops. When I turned 18, I reaffirmed my life choice by applying to the Argentine Academy of Fine Arts to, later on, graduate from the Argentine Art University.
What was the biggest lesson you learned while trying to become an artist?
The challenges and lessons were many, and the most interesting is that they never end. I have learned that being an artist entails great responsibility and commitment to myself and the medium; it requires a lot of work and persistence. At the same time, art is not a single or static path. There are multiple dynamic options, and they flow so that playful and creative intentions always find their place. Each experience makes me learn and grow, both personally and professionally.
The Non-objective World, Mixed technique on paper, 60x30cm, 2008 © Samanta Masucco
What are you trying to communicate with your art?
My paintings show subjective and intimate dialogues inspired by nature, elements, cycles and poetry, and their encounter with the socio-cultural present. Visual dialogues I express with strength and determination, movement and also calm. My paintings cover the organic, the sensitive, and the expectant of transformation.
What about your inspiration? What artists influence and inspire your work the most?
I feel profound admiration for many artists from different styles, times, and places. Many have influenced and inspired me throughout the years, and they still do so. I feel that they somehow accompany me. And I mean not only visual artists but also writers, musicians, etc. From Argentina, for instance, I cannot help mentioning Atahualpa Yupanki, Juan L. Ortiz, Antonio Berni, Felipe Noé, and Cristina Dartiguelongue, among many others. Of course, I include all-time masters, like Van Gogh and Hokusai.
Koi Paintings #6, Mixed Technique on paper, 28x20 cm, 2020 © Samanta Masucco
Koi Paintings #13, Mixed Technique on paper, 28x20 cm, 2020 © Samanta Masucco
How would you describe your creative process? Where do you start when creating a new painting?
My creative process begins with a brush and colors as tools of creation of the primary visual gesture. It then grows into abstraction by embracing other expressions and techniques. I use black and white as the contrast of intertwining living matter and emptiness. They represent an organic and free encounter. I also use colors as light and life instinct and, finally, figures as elements of transformation. In my last series of work and those I am currently working on, contrasts, textures and shades started to share the scene with chiaroscuro.
What’s the essential element in your art?
Color and composition are the essential elements in my work. They build and define it from the beginning. It could be that color is the center, the medium, and the goal because my paintings are born from it. Then, its qualities start to transform and change, accompanied by textures, lines, and figures. The final piece retains its essential character, color, and composition as an unbreakable union.
How did you evolve this way of working?
I believe the different paths I have taken in art and my personal experiences build my paintings with me. Everything gets intertwined and is released through art, from study to work, from introspection to social empathy and our bond with nature and the environment. I went through different artistic stages, and I continue experimenting with different techniques, visual elements, and their expressive, compositional, and discursive capabilities.
Elements, Oil on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2020 © Samanta Masucco
White Landscape (detail), Oil on canvas, 60x120 cm, 2020 © Samanta Masucco
What do you think about the art community and market? And how did your perception change over the last year due to the pandemic?
Without a doubt, the pandemic has hit us all in multiple ways. Nobody was able to escape from it. The artistic community and market are not the exception. Therefore, it is essential to recognize its prompt and relentless search for alternatives and solutions to continue expanding artistic and cultural exchange horizons. Technological media are quite appropriate and useful to such an end, and they are here very likely to stay, to coexist in a new communication, exchange and plurality dynamic.
What are your thoughts on digital presentations, like fairs and exhibitions, for artists? Do you think these are good opportunities for young artists like yourself?
Virtual exhibits and galleries are excellent opportunities for artists, the public, and the art market. Although it is always marvelous and essential to be directly, bodily, and materially present with your pieces, these new ways of art exhibit and circulation open communication and growth paths for artists and the public and the market. They represent a great option that offers many possibilities and benefits. It is a dynamic that grows, and it is very enlightening and interesting to be a part of it.
In the Yellow River, Oil on canvas, 70x50 cm, 2020 © Samanta Masucco
Finally, what are your plans for the future? Any exciting projects, exhibitions, or collaborations you are looking forward to?
I am currently working on several art projects and proposals, expanding creative techniques and, in some cases, working multidisciplinary with other artists. I feel passionate about both individual pictorial creation and team conceptual pieces involving other artists and disciplines. I am close to finishing a new series of abstract landscape paintings with an intimate perspective, continuing with nature and its cycles as inspiration. Also, I am working on a photo book about women and the gender inequalities worsened by the pandemic and a series of audiovisual installations with a creative team that includes musicians, photographers, and costume designers. I look forward to exhibiting and sharing all this art very soon.
