MASSIMO
GIANNONI

Massimo Giannoni was born in Empoli in 1954. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where in 1979 he won the Lubiam Prize—awarded to the best student from all the Fine Arts Academies in Italy—alongside Hans Hartung, who served as mentor for the event. After his first two solo exhibitions at the Vivita Gallery in Florence (1985, 1987), he decided to move to Sydney, Australia, where he produced a series of commissioned portraits while simultaneously working on large abstract paintings using watercolor on oiled paper.

Before returning permanently to Italy, he spent a period in the United States, continuing his work as a commissioned portraitist and abstract painter, exhibiting in Chicago in 1996 and 1997 at Thomas Monahan Fine Arts. Back in Italy, he began painting in oils, experimenting with a highly textured technique involving thick layers of paint. This allowed him to create images that appear abstract and informal up close but take on a more realistic and defined form as the viewer steps back.

His favorite subjects include libraries, where the overlapping stacks of books and the spines visible within the shelves suggest stories already read and others yet to be discovered, projecting the viewer into their own lived experience. Another recurring theme is handbag interiors, far removed from the static, accumulative nature of libraries, lit by almost psychedelic LED lights. He is also drawn to evocative places such as semi-empty, neglected rooms, where a chair or a few scattered books hint at a human presence, as well as ancient Florentine noble palaces like the grand Palazzo Serristori, or, in his most recent exhibition, plaster casts and vast museum halls.

Among his public exhibitions: Fuori tema / Italian Feeling, part of the 14th Rome Quadriennale at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in 2005—the same year he opened Il Paesaggio Italiano Contemporaneo at Palazzo Ducale in Gubbio. This was followed by 1968–2007: Arte Italiana, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi at Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2007, and his participation in the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2011. In 2019, to mark the anniversary of the Italian Republic, he inaugurated a solo exhibition at the Palace of Nations in Geneva; finally, in 2020, as part of the Quirinale Contemporaneo project, two of his paintings were acquired into the collection of the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome.