The youthful and fresh style of Silvia Martignago´s paintings expresses the desire of evolution and change. Silvia Martignago's works are created entirely through the use of colour in manner which emphasises both formation and expression. Depiction is left to the colours: the dense physicality of the paint substitutes the drawing, defining the form and constructing the work through undulating contours which gives nature and countryside a three-dimensional effect. This is Silvia Matignago's style. Encapsulating her emotions in colour, importance is not so much given to the where or the who but to the sense of what she does. Everything represented in her paintings has a personal significance which is expressed through colour and chromatic emotion. The palette knife with which she applies the colours becomes an extension of the artist, who entrusts her soul in this instrument, resulting in a gestural painting style.
I would describe it as eclectic and free, capable of ranging over new and personal expressive forms. Her paintings evoke a memory of Monet, poetic echoes of Chagall, and combine the informal gestures of Pollock. Freeing one´s own impulse, one´s own emotion, is fundamental. The form becomes of secondary importance: it is only a medium through which one can express and convey their own emotion. This, after all, is one of the elements which constitutes what today we call contemporary art. One of the principle tasks of today´s art is communication, to provoke emotion and understanding. And each artist attempts to convey their message in their own personal way. Silvia Martignago has understood how art can render visible what is not, what is inside and beyond the eye. Her ability to light up the dark, takes form - like a metaphor - in the light of her paintings, expressed in colour and through microcrystals which reflect light and bring colours to life. The canvas is a "Spiritual Place" through which she does not define colours in light but expresses light through colour. Silvia Martignago composes, through her swift application of colour, a poetic sensitivity which at moments reveals itself to then conceal itself. The background of the painting expresses in colour, in its tonality and transparency, the words to this fine, and a times timid, poetry, composed of delicate gradations which thicken and suddenly disappear.

June 2006 | Lucia Majer | Art Critic

Silvia Martignago’s painting has taken numerous paths on a journey sweeping from the figurative representation of reality to the creation of an abstract language which embraces the instinctive elements of perception and emotion. Rather than concentrating on the object itself, Silvia Martignago experiments with pictorial techniques, exploring their potential in a manner which continues to express the sense of tension and movement already present in her previous works but adopting a completely new approach. The representation of the image is of secondary importance, the landscapes in her previous canvases have been replaced by a single subject: representing the atmosphere.
The brushstroke has also evolved: from the spatula with which the artist created forms, guiding the gaze across formations of material and attracting light in a distinctive manner (using those little microspheres of crystal), to a new style which transforms the canvas into a composition of colour, resembling almost a mosaic. Dynamism which emanates from colour is the central theme: the perception of an object in movement, focusing on its composition of atoms in motion. From pointillism Silvia has learnt to define the constitution of things by manipulating the intensity of colour which is given life by light strokes of the brush. One experiences a whirlwind of colour as the material composition of the object flakes away, as if it is falling apart until it finally disappears. Little spots of colour cover the canvas and build up texture and, rather than gradually passing from light to dark, colours appear side by side, often in stark contrast.
Colours play with each other and give a sense of movement and depth. A game based on contrast, where thick saturation plays alongside delicate evanescence. Whilst lighter colours appear closer and radiate from the backdrop, darkness tends to distance itself, retreating into the background. In this manner Silvia manages to transfer the nature of artifice from her first works to pathos in her latest, where she has completely abandoned the figurative and concentrated on restoring atmosphere, exploring on the canvas the fusion of space, light and movement, whilst at the same time expressing fiery and explosive emotion.

June 2008 | Lucia Majer | Art Critic

Each artist searches for their Absolute. This Absolute, however, is limited by something more relative: individual emotion. Silvia Martignago’s art is an introspective journey, a path leading her to the discovery of the potential of the human soul. Searching for perfect harmony between the internal and the external she dissolves the barrier between man and nature. From the painter Sergio Favotto, her teacher, she has learnt the academic rules of construction, colour and figurative painting. Her personality, however, has led her to develop the expression of pure colour, by giving secondary importance to the subject and (as opposed to creating colour in the light) drawing light from colour. Whereas composition tends toward harmony, conflict liberates emotion. Small specks of colour condense all the energy of life, and these specks when observed from a distance become one. Martignago harnesses the force which radiates from colour, enriching and distinguishing it in her landscapes and grassy expanses which merge toward the sky and become one. The details in the foreground, which simply provide the subject, give way to depth and to “taches” of colour which, set against each other, create a “mosaic” effect. As nature does not have fixed points, each theme radiates a different sensation. This “diversity” reflecting the changing force of nature, is where Silvia Martignago’s painting comes into its own. Her work stimulates the eye in front of an ever-changing nature, tuning the senses through colour and diversity, enriching them one and the other. In this way her paintings become “chromatic scores”, fluent and resonant, which find light through skilful composition, and create a vibrant harmony composed of chords of yellow, blue, red and green transforming nature into a glorious colourful concert.

December 2009 | Lucia Majer | Art Critic