Tommaso Fattovich
“It’s a struggle, finding the right moment when the painting is finished. Each painting is a story of the struggle of what you had to go through to get there. This is why I paint. Because it’s hard to put into words things that are visual and full of emotion.”
Tommaso Fattovich is an abstract painter who deploys the Surrealist strategy of automatism to create raw, layered, emotive works that convey feelings of desolation and decay. Fattovich describes his early life growing up in Milan, Italy, as his first education in the arts. Self-taught as a painter, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a Master of Science in International Business from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton.
Fattovich calls his style Abstract Punk and deliberately rejects traditional techniques in lieu of brut art strategies. Painting with a mixture of acrylics and other mediums on large-scale canvases, he uses his hands and other tools, like plaster trowels and forks, adding rough textures and dimensions to his surfaces. “I use whatever I can use to make that mark. It’s not even a brushstroke.” His compositions evolve according to a subliminal process where he responds viscerally to the colours, layers, lines and shapes, coaxing each piece along until it reveals itself as being finished. This is the most rewarding part of the artistic process: discovering the moment when the work has become “what it was meant to be” and connecting with a viewer who responds to it.
He is motivated by an inner need to express energy and spontaneity. The imagery in his work is a reflection of what he calls “destroyed surreal environments.” The rust and rabble of the decaying urban environment, both in his hometown of Milan and his adopted home in Florida, finds its way into his compositions. Fragments of the modern world appear and then disappear in the work. The key to his inspiration is the search for a sensory response to life, which will result in an emotional connection that can be “continually redefined by the viewer.”
Works by Fattovich are in many private collections. Recent exhibitions include the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Art Boca Raton – International Art Fair, Coral Springs Museum of Art, Miami (Red Dot Art Fair, Art Wynwood, Eighteen: The Most Influential Emerging Artists - Blink Group Fine Art Gallery), Los Angeles (Downtown LA Art Show), and New York (AB Gallery).
