Massimo Giannoni
​

Massimo Giannoni attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where in 1979 he was awarded for the Lubiam Prize (Mantova), assigned to the best student of all the Fine Arts academies of Italy. Giannoni's work is mainly based on the representation of places of accumulation, storage, places of memory. Libraries, stock exchanges, squares, natural science museums' showcases are his recurring subjects. The orderly or sometimes disorderly overabundance of information, both the once enclosed in books, and those of luminous numerical data on stock exchange boards, induce the viewer to a sense of vertigo.

Giannoni's research is focused on the environment and not on human nature, but at the same time it speaks to us about man and the inexorable passage of time, where objects remain, as opposed to living beings.

​

He uses a technique that evades the counterposed methods of abstraction and figurative, characterized by the layering of very pasty oil colors, which enhance the expressive power of the image that seems to vibrate. Distance is fundamental for the fruition of his artworks. The thick matter, spread out with a spatula, makes the contours crumble, the figure dissolves and only from a long distance it magically recomposes itself. Matter thus assumes a life of its own, detached itself from describing and becomes subject into the subject.

​

Among the many important retrospectives set up in public museum spaces we recall: in 2005, the XIV Quadriennale di Roma, "Fuori tema / Italian feeling", edited by G. Agnese, L. Caramel, V. Deho, G. Di Pietrantonio, M Tonelli, G. Verzotti, at Palazzo Delle Esposizioni in Rome; in the same year he took part in the exhibition “Il Paesaggio Italiano Contemporaneo”, curated by Marco Meneguzzo at Palazzo Ducale in Gubbio. In 2007 he was selected for the important retrospective "1968-2007, Arte Italiana", curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, for the Palazzo Reale of Milan. In 2011 he was one of the 10 selected artists from the Fondazione Roma, for the "54th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition", at Palazzo Venezia in Rome, and in the same year he took part in the Mantua literature festival, with the personal exhibition " L'Aleph ", edited by Alberto Agazzani, at Palazzo della Ragione in Mantua. In 2013, he participated at the exhibition "Mimesis", variations on the book, edited by Sergio Risaliti, at the Uffizi Library in Florence, and in the same year, he held the personal exhibition “Durata dell’Immagine”, curated by Flaminio Gualdoni at Palazzo Giureconsulti, Milan. In 2015 he was involved in the collective exhibition "Linee di confine", curated by Marco di Capua at the Bilotti Museum in Rome, and in 2016 he exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Bologna, the oil on canvas "Muro del Pianto", preliminary study for the development of a large triptych (200x600 cm), created for the personal exhibition "Four Triptychs", curated by Marco Tonelli, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 2012. In 2019, during the anniversary celebrations of the Italian Republic, he inaugurates the solo show "Beyond the past", at the Palais des Nations of Geneva, Switzerland. For the critics, Giannoni's works turn out to be "rooms of wonders" that becomes metaphors of another place, only apparently deserted, with shelves of books that contain all the knowledge of time or stock exchanges that seem to accelerate or fragment it.

​

Massimo Giannoni  initiated his artistic experience in the fields of painting, printmaking and watercolor, he has always worked mainly in the media of oil painting exploring all of its’ aspects, landing into a type of figurative painting defined by a particular technique: consisting in a very thick , impastoed and almost abstract quality laid upon unprimed linen canvases that on first up close impression  becomes almost impossible to read a defined image but as the observer distances from the artwork, the image becomes clear and defined.

​

His artworks represent two different and contrasting spaces:   Interiors of bookshops and Libraries, centers of historic culture where the passage of time is at a still, on the other hand, stock exchange images, where things move at a very fast pace, in both , time is an essential symbolic element. It is with these subject matter, that Giannoni’s artworks are present in the top international Art fairs: Bologna, Milan, Verona, Miami-NY Scope, Zurich, Cologne, Paris-Art Paris.

​

​

Solo Exhibitions

2024 MIT Contemporaneo, a cura di Renata Cristina Mazzantini. Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti, Roma.

 Contemporanei a Palazzo Borromeo, a cura di Renata Cristina Mazzantini. Ambasciata Italiana presso la Santa Sede, Roma.

2021 Quirinale Contemporaneo, a cura di Renata Cristina Mazzantini. Palazzo del Quirinale, Roma.

2019  Odunpazari Modern Museum, Erol Tabanca. Eskişehir, Turchia.

2019  Museo Ebraico di Bologna. 

2015  Collezione di Archeologia e d’Arte del Sistema Museale dell’Università degli Studi di Siena, a cura di Enrico Crispolti e Massimo Bignardi. Palazzo San Galgano, Siena.

2013   Massimo Giannoni, Palazzo Giureconsulti, Milano/Milan, Italy

Massimo Giannoni Solo Show 2013, Rarity Gallery, Mykonos, Greece

2012 Massimo Giannoni Foiur Triptyich, Plalazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma/Rome, Italy a cura di/curated by Marco Tonelli

2011   Massimo Giannoni L’Aleph, Palazzo delle Ragione, Mantova/Mantua, Italy, a cura di/curated by Alberto Agazzani

Massimo Giannoni, Galleria Biasutti & Biasutti, Turin, Italy, curated by Giuseppe Biaustti

2010   Galleria Russo: Asso di Quadri, Milano/Milan, a cura di/ curated by   Alberto Agazzani

2008  Galleria Russo, Roma/Rome, Italy a cura di/curated by Lorenzo Canova Studio d’arte Tonelli, Brescia, Italy

2007    Galleria Rubin, Milano/Milan, Italy

2006  Galleria Il Segno, Roma/Rome, Italy, a cura di /curated by Marco Tonelli

2005   Studio D’arte Tonelli, Brescia, Italy

2004 Galleria Rubin, Milan/Milan, Italy, curated by Massimo Bignardi

2000   Libreria Seeber, Firenze/Florence, Italy

1998   La Corte Arte Contemporanea, Firenze/Florence, Italy

1997   Thomas Monahan Fine Arts, Chicago, USA

1996   Thomas Monahan Fine Arts, Chicago, USA

1989   Brown Street Gallery, Sydney, Australia

1987   Galleria Vivita, Firenze/Florence, Italy

1985   Galleria Vivita, Firenze/Florence, Italy

​

​

Selected Group Exhibitions

​

2020 Rarity Gallery, Greece

2013   Mimesis. Variazioni sul libro/Variations on a book, Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Firenze/Florence, a cura di/ curated by Sergio Risaliti

Palazzo Giureconsulti, Milano

Rarity Summer Salon Show 2013, Rarity Gallery, Mykonos, Greece

2012    Rarity Summer Salon Show 2012, Rarity Gallery, Mykonos, Greece

Palazzo della Ragione di Mantova

2011   54 Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, Padiglione Italia, 10 artisti selezionati dalla Fondazione Roma, Palazzo Venezia, Roma/Rome, Italy Suite Italiana, Hanhouse Gallery, Hangzou (R.P.C) a cura di/curated by Tnnaz Lahiji

2010   Galerie Noordeinde, Den Haag, Holland

2009  Contemplazioni. Bellezza e tradizione del Nuovo nella pittura italiana contemporanea.

Castel Sismondo e Palazzo del Podestà, Rimini, Italy, a cura di/ curated by Alberto Agazzani

2008   Urgenza della città, Grandi Magazzini Teatrali, Campobasso, Italy a cura/curated by  di Massimo Bignardi

2007   1968-2007 Arte Italiana, Palazzo Reale, Milano/Milan, Italy, curated b Vittorio Sgarbi

2006 Il silenzio…(Cinque artisti di clausura si confessano), Museolaboratorio- Ex-manifattura tabacchi, Città S. Angelo , Pescara, Italy, curated by Raffaello Becucci

2005   Il paesaggio italiano contemporaneo, Palazzo Ducale, Gubbio, curated by Marco Meneguzzo

2005 Quadriennale di Roma Fuori tema/Italian Feeling, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma/Rome, Italy, a cura di Marco Tonelli

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​