The Galerie Montmartre
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Silvio Porzionato
Silvio Porzionato was born in Piedmont, Italy, in 1971. Trained in fine arts, he began his career as head designer for a major Italian company and took up photography. After traveling the world, Silvio decided to settle in his native village to devote himself entirely to painting.
His first exhibition in 2007 earned him the Mondadori Prize and led to his selection for the Venice Biennale in 2011.
Recognition came quickly with commissions from the Museum of Urban Art in Turin and, above all, the acquisition of 112 paintings by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sicily in 2013.
Although borrowing from the rules of portraiture, the huge faces that are his signature seek more to probe feelings, freed from the conventional framework of representation, to give free rein to a fictional and dreamlike interpretation. This gaze seems to have been captured on the spot, like a stolen snapshot. This is because the artist is also a photographer and knows how to capture the fleeting moment that reveals loneliness, joy, surprise, the expression of an inner life, life itself.
Our artworks
Video of SILVIO PORZIONATO
Biography
Silvio Porzionato’s figurative approach is fundamentally humanistic. Through his imaginary realism, he paints faces as if fighting against oblivion, against the standardization and denial of face-to-face interaction imposed by totalitarianism. From a particular face, the artist seeks to draw out the universal, and through a mirror effect, he shows us that we are not alone in our loneliness.
As a figurative painter with a passion for photography, he understands the dramatic intensity that monochrome can bring by guiding the eye to the essential. He masterfully employs the technique of grisaille, which frees the subject from the rhetoric of color and highlights the variations and nuances of skin tone. The visual power of black and white is unmatched in expressing contrast and relief. It confers a form of authenticity, a timeless dimension, and effectively helps us to go beyond the simple contemplation of forms.