SELF-PORTRAIT
1990-2022
Masri is always animated by the same young enthusiasm; but his painting has now reached the full maturity of the real artist. His research field is, at present, the self-portrait, in which the other genres are concentrated. Another conclusion was not possible: Masri paints himself because the painting has become an indivisible part of his person; Anyway, that subject allows to improve emotional register rich of an unlimited expressive potentiality. No news: glorious precedent VanGogh, obviously. Like the famous Dutchman, but in his proper way, Masri delineates his psychological- iconographic itinerary.
Self-portrait, so. Like a soul landscape, in which the earthy clods are condensed in hard brush strokes shaping the face’s features, skylines captured in bright facets.
Reality re-assumed in a personal experience: now materially owned, translated into dripping colors; now impalpable vanitas reflexed into glass shattered sizes. Self-portrait like still-life: expression adumbrated but fixed in the time, immutable in a few cases; in other cases, condemned to become dust because of ephemeral entity.
So, Masri’s strength is manifest in these faces, as with many Dorian Gray’s portraits – without devilish corruption, however – magically animated thanks to a proper life, and upon them the time and the existence have left their tracks.
Carlo Cinelli
Art critic and historian
Honorary inspector of cultural heritage
University professor of History of Art
Middlebury College, Florence
