Il Castello Gallery, Trento, May 1972, solo exhibition
Critical review by Enrico Paulucci.

When Michelangelo was still a student at the Accademia Albertina many years ago, I thought that he would eventually turn to architecture. And so it happened, and it wasn’t so difficult to guess. Since his first attempts, he was moved by a strong need to arrange his compositions, the planes and the spaces, in a geometrical fashion, which is the main prerogative of an architect. For many years Michelangelo busied himself with projects and constructions, climbed dusty ladders in building sites, worked at many drafts at his drawing board - a ruler and a pair of compasses in hand, devising houses, bridges, interiors and gardens. Nevertheless, the ancient passion for painting was clearly hiding under the light graph paper. And just now he came into my studio with heaps of albums full of colour pictures of his paintings, accomplished with inspired vigour, announcing that he has given up plumb lines and spirit levels. So here comes this exhibition that Michelangelo chose to set in the mountains of his Trentino: a very colourful style, reminiscent of another Trentino painter, Fortunato Depero: precise connections of forms, arabesqued lines making up abstract bi- and tridimensional images, fully decorative, positively recalling the dynamic and geometrical taste of the Art Nouveau movement. His most recent works can be identified and inscribed in the current “optical” movements and I daresay (and I hope the artist won’t take any offence) that if he were to develop these paintings on a larger scale, they could work as imaginary spaces and ornaments for large buildings and surfaces. In this manner, he could retain both of his passions, art and architecture, both self evident in these vigorous, strong works.

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