Motionless scenaries

Guglielmo Meltzeid’ paintings cuts up images, details of small molecules which characterize the everyday’ life, such as the artist observes it, picking up ideas and connotations that struck his sensitive attention.

It’s a characterized representation of a graphic-illustrative mark and from a refined “liquid” painting from where is gleaming a delicate “rubbery” effect, which shows a wise use of the acrylic colors.
It shines with a mild sensation of optimism and hope, thanks to his clear and effective insight , typical of Meltzeid the artist. All is flooded with light, reflections studied in details. It’s almost like breathing a fairytale atmosphere, where the scenery results motionless, almost suspended ; where the characters or the objects reflected, give to the engrossed observer a reminder to classic styles.

Portraits of known people, friends, family, capture the attention of Guglielmo Meltzeid describing them to us with an incredible precision, exactly like his eyes can perceive them; adding willingly a touch of poetry, that leaves us to remember those typical 50s and 60s atmospheres , affable, at time simply like daydreaming.

As well as his portrays he also loves painting specific details of motorcycle’s lights and lenses and also classic cars – but not only – with a spirit which is almost child-like. The speculative metallic effects give off an idea of traceable in the verisimilitude and in the present form of the surrounding environment. The everyday images are also directed towards an inner research of the self; reflecting an investigation study of reality, incisive, as alternative to a more plastic/material language.

In Guglielmo’s paintings I notice an almost intuitive tendency to “Realism” like Edward Hopper’s work and to a great “respect to Precision” typical also of Charles Sheeler, that are declined thanks to a reading key completely personal and original.

Massimiliano Bisazza

Which expression defines better Guglielmo Meltzeid’s stylistic figure?
I don’t think we can talk about Realism or Hyperrealism….tout-court. In his work there is too much soul, too much feeling and emotional communication, to be able to use schematic definitions.
If with Hyperrealism we intend a ruthless photography of a detailed reality x-rayed with a maniacal precision, this is not Meltzeid’s approach, which instead talks about a poetic and romantic realism.
He is surely close to Edward Hopper’s work, but nowhere near his melancholy loneliness, both removed by a serene representation of life and its real data.
Massimo Bontempelli wrote regarding the magic Realism “Life, the most normal every day event we’d like to see it as an adventurous miracle” goes well with Meltzeid’s poetic view, which investigating daily events, gives magic and emphasis to actions and “cult” objects (motorbikes, cars, boats..), from loved landscapes imprinted in his memory, to loved people, with a big innate courage to love life’s normality.
The representation of the mechanic element, cars or bikes whichever, seems humanized: objects appear animated by a spirit which surfaces through blue skies, trees leafy branches, houses profiles, a face, a ladybird….reflexes that evoke the surroundings where the subject is inserted. And here’s when the background becomes foreground and defines itself as a promenade, a village, an atmosphere , well fitted in a clear and tidy composition of the work which represents them, made with the maximum attention to details.
Meltzeid’s portraits are like an inner photograph, the person’s character and personality come out clearly, always enhanced with a smile, and a wink of malicious or joyful complicity. The subject on the canvas comes to us with the same intensity of a happy meeting.
Guglielmo Meltzeid’s realism requires a maximum attention to commit itself to art, in the absolute domain of a pictorial language.

Maria Teresa Briotti