Varesenoi | Matteo Massagrande

The exhibition is a testament to the quality of the curatorial choices that Sofia Macchi’s gallery has been making for years, promoting many young artists while also keeping a keen eye on those established and historically significant like Massagrande, born in Padua in 1959 and considered one of the major representatives of the new Italian figuration.

“Without Knocking” – the title is taken from a verse by the Hungarian poet Jòzsef Attila – indicates that in Massagrande’s rooms, one enters in absolute freedom, without constraints, fully able to marvel at a detail, a color, or an object.

Alongside his beloved subjects, interiors bathed in the first light of dawn, and verandas acting as windows to the blue sea, a corpus of works narrates Greece, its lights and smells, the green patches around the houses, and the climbing plants at the entrance.

It is an almost magical landscape, superbly reproduced thanks to a long and refined color research, which has, over time, become almost a philosophical endeavor.

Matteo Massagrande, who splits his time between studios in Padua and Hajòs, Hungary, is also an exceptionally skilled engraver, with some works included in the Print Cabinet of the Uffizi in Florence.

In addition to his solo exhibition in 2017 at Punto sull’Arte titled “Di volta in volta,” he was the creator of “Canto dolente d’amore (last day of Van Gogh)” at the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza and, in 2018, “In My Room: Artists Paint the Interior 1950-NOW” at The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in the United States.