Pindemonte represents a fundamental step in Mastrovito's research: it is his first attempt at mural engraving, a technical solution that would be repeated in various locations in subsequent years.
The work was conceived in December 2008, inspired by a work by William Anastasi, as Mastrovito himself recounts in the catalog for Easy Come, Easy Go (2011):
"I remember it, it was Christmas. When it's Christmas I always get new ideas, I don't know why. I was in the toilet—like Freddie Mercury composing Crazy Little Thing Called Love, but he was in the bath, instead I was exactly on the toilet bowl—glancing at a Cuneo's CesaC catalog. Suddenly, a picture of William Anastasi's work appeared in front of me. A streak on a wall carved by pickaxes, and all the rubble left there, precisely under the streak, as if a god had passed by to engrave the rock with his little finger. Enlightening, I thought. So I wrote an email to Barbara, who was asking me for a new idea for the planned May exhibition at Analix. I thought of these figures, these “guardians” carved into the wall, and of their ashes, contained in the polls below.
I clearly remember that on those walls had painted a lot of artists, from Julian Opie to Martin Creed, from Matt Collishaw to Alex Cecchetti and Luca Francesconi, from Jessica Diamond until myself, a couple of time, and I thought that gradually, with a crop and a bunch of patience, all the layers of painting could be found, rebuilding the archaeological history of the gallery just by unearthing all those colours.
Step by step the idea became concrete and trasformed itself in Pindemonte, a sort of funny danse macabre where eighteen characters, jumping, playing and shagging, they run straightly into death’s arms. And their ashes are contained in eighteen small polls, as a little cemetery of painting. I remember that, for the first time in my life, once I ended the work after having passed sleepless nights scratching tens of square meters with the crop, I cried for the emotion."