Arturo Carmassi was born in Lucca in 1925 and in 1930 he followed the family to Turin where he studied (he attended the courses of the “School of the Fontanesi landscape” and of the Albertina Academy) and worked until 1952.

Facing the heavy tradition of the Historical Avant-gardes, he realizes that from that he had to learn the great lesson of expressive freedom.

After traveling in Europe and working for some time in Paris, he moved to Milan where he established relations with Gino Ghiringhelli, owner of the “Il Milione” gallery who became his merchant and in 1956 took the studio in via Andegari, working hard on works informal.

The following year his works established themselves in important exhibitions abroad: at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, at the Sculpture Biennial in Antwerp and at the “Junge Italianischen Plastik” in Darmstadt and Dusseldorf.

In the mid-fifties, Carmassi developed a strong interest in sculpture and in the decade from 1955 to 1965 his activity as a sculptor took up more and more space, so much so as to be established in Liguria, in Bocca di Magra, where he set up a large studio of sculpture giving life to large-scale works, which three years later will see him as protagonist with a personal room at the Venice Biennale.

In ’66 Carmassi makes a trip to Brittany and at this time the moment of his surreal experience is noted. In this period he left Milan to retire to the Tuscan countryside, to Torre di Fucecchio, between Florence, Pisa and Lucca, where he still lives.

The late sixties saw his figurative world find the greatest results. An imaginary and fantastic dimension was born, where the magic, the mystery, the occult take shape. In the mid-seventies sculpture took over, but also the chalcography and lithography assumed great importance for the artist. The Eighties recognize the personality of Carmassi not only in the field of figurative arts, but also within the wider international cultural world, being invited to participate in precisely international talks on culture and communication.

In 1992, in Florence, the “Il Ponte” Gallery presented an exhibition of his works from 1951 to 1961, while in 1994 he presented a corpus of his works on paper from 1977 to 1994.

In the nineties the artist faces a new turn, feeling the need to reduce his expressive means to the minimum, to flesh out the language with the result of a work that looks absolutely “modern” and where reaching out towards “modernity” is intended as an intent and need to be “current”.