Italian contemporary artist Marco Grassi is set to exhibit his most recent art collection, Don’t be Just a Pretty Face, in a solo show at HOFA Gallery (Los Angeles) in Fall 2019. This comes after the grand success of his solo exhibition at HOFA’s prestigious Mayfair gallery, London, in April this year.

Marco Grassi is famous for combining realist and surrealist techniques in his captivating figurative portraits of women. Born in Milan, Italy in 1966, he has developed a very personal style of painterly, mixed media portraiture characterized by bold brush strokes, spatula blended paints and gold leaf backgrounds worked to achieve textured and intense portraits of his female subjects. 

His bold, large-scale paintings have a very energetic feel owing not only to how he makes his portraits but what he captures in his subjects. Marco Grassi’s portraits celebrate the experiences and emotions of women in the moment when he paints them. This gives his works a positive vibe which resonates with the urban mood du jour and is still very evident in his most recent works where he has altered his trademark style and technique.

Grassi’s portraits have unmistakable warmth, character and vibrance. Through the intensity of his subjects’ emotions, his paintings evoke a sense of confident personality and style that engages the viewer and has the power to become the defining focal point of any space.  Speaking about the exhibition and the expressiveness of the body, Grassi says, “I am attempting to portray to our younger generations a truthful and realistic picture, not only what is seen objectively around us, but also, the filtered inputs coming from the media.”

Marco Grassi's works have been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions and international fairs such as Art Miami, Art Basel, SCOPE Basel and the Moscow Art Fair. He was selected to be at the opening of the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011.