THE GRID
In her seminal essay ‘Grids’, the art historian Rosalind Krauss claimed that ‘the grid functions to declare the modernity of modern art’. ‘By “discovering” the grid’, Krauss continues, ‘cubism, de Stijl, Mondrian, Malevich ... landed in a place that was out of reach of everything that went before. Which is to say, they landed in the present, and everything else was declared to be the past’.
Growing up between Rome and New York I became passionate about making art. Living in two cities where decorative flourish is always supported by simple geometry inspired me to paint my first Grid: a structuring of abstract color blocks stacked upon one another, evocative of the ancient brickwork one can find in Roman landmarks such as the Coliseum; but also the geometrical clean shapes of urban maps that come to define an industrial modern city like New York.
Fascinated with geometry from a young age, it was only later, in New York, that I became acquaint- ed and inspired by the Color Field Painting movement and the ability of color to convey and trigger feelings and emotions, in particular by artists like Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Mark Rothko.
One day in my studio -exploring the endless possibilities and nuances of purple and how to paint with tape- I accidentally created a geometric sequence that felt in perfect harmony with my state of mind. This geometric sequence, I named “The Grid”, and The Grid became my signature style through which to explore feelings and memory through color blocks.
After graduating from NYU, I lived and painted briefly in Barcelona, before moving to Malibu, Cali- fornia, where I opened my own studio. The spirited colours and natural lush of Malibu, in contrast with the rigidity and man-made symmetry of more industrial cities like New York and Barcelona challenged me to continue to explore architecture, colour and form through my “Grid” paintings, which by then had become a survey of the feelings evoked by the architectural and natural sur- roundings of the places in which I had lived.
From the streets in Rome, to the skyscrapers of New York City; the whimsical buildings of Gaudi in Barcelona or the mid-century modern architecture in LA, from Richard Neutra to Frank Lloyd Wright; I had by then understood the paramount role that architecture and nature play not only in defining the aesthetics of a city, but also the collective psyche of its citizens.
In 2020 I moved to Mexico City, inspired by its vibrant artistic scene as much as the colourful build- ings from masters such as Luis Barragán. For the past three years, I have been painting in an artist residency at the heart of the city, where I have began to develop an interest in natural dyes while continuing my explorations on architecture and Color-Field painting through my Grid.
Over the years, my Grid has enabled me to expand the possibilities of form, color and composition, re-conceptualizing the modernist grid of artists such as Piet Mondrian or Malevich for an effect that is both architectural and emotive, and hence unravelling a trajectory of the function of the grid in Contemporary art through new techniques and Color-Field painting.