“It is a refined way of painting aiming at the delicate perfection of balance, both a sunny and a lunar balance. The artist searches for beauty and refuses brutality -that is life turning into death- in order to shelter in the essence of things, in harmony and in the ideal of beauty which is concealed in the plastic work and allowed to emerge only at a superficial level. The scenographic installations that he creates represent light, the theatricalism of the moment which tries to overcome description, the search of the allegory hidden in change, in his power of being mysteriously magic and, at the same time, simple and consistent so that symmetry rules and separates every single moment. His work stands out for its variety and its taste for idyllic subjects, for a mitigated view, for the strength of the idea, for the chromatic intensity it achieves when depicting the happiest moments… He makes use of scenography to convey suggestions by transforming innocence, trying to shape a sharp existence through expressiveness, especially within sculpture, so he is consistent with diversity though he grounds on a clear mastery of technique”. (Critical review taken from “INCONTRI D’ARTE” Contemporary Art Exhibition presented by Professor Vittorio Sgarbi).
“Michele Panfoli’s work is brilliant and bold, it has a continuous dynamic force but still it keeps an essential composition balance and, at the same time, it shows a tasteful and harmonic mastery of colors”. (Taken from the book “Nuova Arte” Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, critical review by Paolo Levi).
"The Artist who investigates the depths of the soul and mind" (Gianni Dunil)
“With his work Michele Panfoli carries out a personal investigation which takes root in Nineteenth Century Painting and is open to a highly creative language that can be moderate and peacefully narrative or free and instinctive, it is always questioned on several fronts and rich in references and messages related to human sensibility since it handles touching current topics”. (Gabriella Gentilini).
Michele Panfoli’s painting is a means for expressing a composition mode that rests upon technically perfect stylistic choices. His figures convey their great evocative power through the artist’s Giotto style brushwork. The unsaid assumes the nuances of what is faithfully represented. The Artist tells his works through the sign. That is the sign followed by the rational behaviour, which is weary of wandering in the labyrinth of the Psyche and claims to be brought to light again. His line reaches that point whereby the signified is overturned by a signifier that finds its guidelines in the linguistic universals of communicability. His works depict overt realities that ideally materialize into lights and shades. Their aim is to involve the absent-minded observer who’s insensible to what happens. His investigation moves freely between the memory that claims to be brought to light and the unsaid, which is best represented by forgetfulness. The painting shifts from a perfect blank slate to a new world made of tacit and, at the same time, evident sensations. Thus the Artist goes beyond the classical academic painting and achieves his own creative language. It is an essential language that has deep meanings. In Panfoli’s works feelings convey strong emotions. The emotional side is made visible in every single work. Emotions that get “other” meanings and relish the Infinite, trying to reproduce it on the canvas. Tacit sensations are easily perceptible. Concreteness replaces what is commonly accepted. The reality that surrounds us, with its limits and its upsides. This is the starting point of Michele’s works which, given their great evocative power, are bound to place Michele Panfoli among the most important Italian Contemporary Artists. 13/09/2010 (Dr. Salvatore Russo).
The Artist follows a personal and innovative development that gathers all his achievements and sets them beside his background, evoking its faded contents and making them play in his paintings.
Michele Panfoli creates with absolute emotion, in some cases he breaks the link with the formal reality so to bring into question the artist’s presence and to enhance his artistic Self, by evoking his deepest roots.
His works communicate a message of deep current interest and make us face his creative knowledge, that reaches the Soul through the colours and through the gesture, which is motivated by expressions of pure wisdom, of mnemonic tales, of dreams mingled with reality, in order to give more and more space to the colours’ infinite energies.
Michele Panfoli is the man of our time, his surrealism takes us in a world that shelters his artistic tension made of accusations and suffering feelings, and transforms them into a delicate bouquet of endless emotions (Mariarosaria Belgiovine).
“The extraordinary theme of Michele Panfoli’s work sets a pictorial boundary whence the Artist, through his own world, his creativity and his charming view of the Passion of the Christ, considers and structures a figurative innovation: his lines are meant to fulfil the dream, that is the main transfiguring instrument for a self liberation and is related to the progressive change of time and of the consequences from where the issue of renewal is expected to come. Indeed, the Artist Michele Panfoli shows, through a series of images, how faith faces all the situations that human beings go through, and brightens their tones by shifting the attention towards light and the definite forms, towards new modes of life, whose iconographical equivalent, the painting, is the only instrument for setting the very beginning of life within the consistent definitions of the human behaviour under the law of God”.
(Critical review by Flavio De Gregorio ).