Europe · art under $50,000
Massimo Scognamiglio · Europe · art under $50,000
Massimo Scognamiglio: a Roman visual artist with a documented career from 1998, from Palazzo delle Esposizioni and Centro Pecci to the LÌMEN collection, MACRO Asilo and The Gold Standard.
Massimo Scognamiglio: a practice documented since 1998
Born in Rome in 1969, Scognamiglio works across painting, photography, video, performance and writing. In 1998 his interactive project La coscienza luccicante appeared in the group exhibition From Video Art to Interactive Art at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. Fashion photography was an early point of departure; portraiture, landscape and moving images later became ways to examine identity, memory, technology and psychological experience.
The complete biography traces a continuous inquiry rather than a sequence of unrelated media. A figure moves from photograph to painting while the question of what an image reveals—and conceals—remains.
Photography and painting in continuous dialogue
Photography was not an early phase abandoned for painting. From the beginning, Scognamiglio has used the camera to study faces, gestures and the space around a body; in the canvases, these questions become colour, material and the architecture of a room. In Gli Strappi, a printed photographic image is torn and worked over by hand, bringing both media onto one surface.
The three newly presented black-and-white photographs — two portraits and a figure seen from behind holding a book — also stand as photographs in their own right. Beside The Gold Standard paintings they reveal a recurring interest in isolated figures and psychological distance. Individual titles, dates and print techniques were not supplied, so the captions describe only what can be seen.
Four distinct institutional milestones
After the 1998 Palazzo delle Esposizioni exhibition, Scognamiglio was among the authors presented in the 2005 Videominuto programme at Centro Pecci in Prato. In 2016 Outer Space, made with Massimo Buccilli, entered the Segni collection of the LÌMEN Art Museum in Vibo Valentia. In 2019 MACRO Asilo in Rome hosted Where is the Future? in its Cinema Room, with a short film, photographs and a discussion.
These were respectively a group exhibition, a video programme, a museum collection work and a public presentation. Naming their different forms makes the record more useful than calling each a museum solo show.
Migration, recognition and a longer view
A 2016 solo photography exhibition, Punk Aristocracy, was presented at Takeaway Gallery in Rome and covered by la Repubblica. Terra! grew in 2018 from an encounter with migrants arriving in Vibo Valentia and a period aboard the Aquarius. Where is the Future? extended that concern to people living in occupied buildings in Cosenza. Scognamiglio was an Exibart Prize finalist in 2022 and 2023; he joined Dorothy Circus Gallery’s Because, Perché Sì between Rome and London in 2023.
The 2025 Rome exhibition The Space Between Us, co-produced with Fondazione Solares delle Arti, brought together roughly ten years of work. The Press & Recognition archive links to interviews, critical articles and records of these milestones.
The Gold Standard (2026): rooms and solitary figures
These acrylic canvases continue the Cycle of Rooms begun in 2008. Solitary characters inhabit sparse interiors in ochre, black, orange and gold. The room is less a realistic setting than an architecture for psychological distance.
Francis Bacon is a reference in Scognamiglio’s visual world, especially in the relation between body and space. It is a point of comparison, not a claim that the two practices are equivalent. The photographs here include whole canvases and details of different works.
Why look closer, and what the prices mean
A sustained practice, documented institutional appearances and an identifiable expressive language are reasons to study the work. Portrait, torn surface and interior space recur across media; cultural potential is not a prediction of financial return.
The Gold Standard canvases have an indicative €3,000–6,000 range; obtain the final written price, dimensions and condition for the individual painting. A separate unique 2021 work on paper, It feels like it’s just the universe looking out my mouth #8, is listed online at €610. The two should not be compared as if they were works from the same series or medium.
Works and visual paths
Sources and further reading
Sources allow readers to verify and explore. Official artist links are part of the feature, not an appendix.
- Profilo sintetico ↗
- Press & Recognition ↗
- Massimo Scognamiglio · profilo Pago Sì ↗
- Archivio delle opere ↗
- Opera e prezzo · studio ↗
- Biografia e mostre · studio ↗
- Exibart Prize · opera ↗
- Massimo Scognamiglio · voce Wikipedia ↗
- La coscienza luccicante (1998) · Palazzo Esposizioni Roma ↗
- Videominuto (2005) · Centro Pecci / Nove da Firenze ↗
- Outer Space · collezione del Museo d’Arte LÌMEN ↗
- Where is the Future? · MACRO Asilo ↗
- Exibart Prize · finalisti 2022 ↗
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Painting · memory · collage
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