Born in Milan in 1958, Alessandro Papetti is one of Italy’s foremost contemporary painters. He has exhibited widely for almost thirty years, notably at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2011, at major museums in Milan, Paris, Moscow and Tokyo and at galleries around the world, from Vancouver to Cape Town.

A largely self-taught artist, Papetti’s most recognizable works are sweeping, cinematic paintings focused on industrial archaeology, urban landscapes and portraits and studies of nudes, frequently painted from a high-angle perspective. Milan has served as an important backdrop for his work: “I tend to use monochromatic colours. The light in my cities is fairly northern because I was born in Milan and that definitely had an influence. These are the colours from my city, from the air that I’ve breathed.”

In 1995 Papetti met the writer and Giacometti biographer, James Lord, who wrote a significant critical essay on his work. Lord described Papetti’s work as “profoundly Italian” and referenced the influence of Tintoretto: “The frenetic movement, ghostly perspective and supernatural sense of space so characteristic of the Venetian master have clearly left their mark on the young Milanese painter without, however, overpowering his personal and original view. He has, in short, mastered the configuration of his inner world, an achievement which is essential to the ontological transfiguration that endow with talismanic permanence the transitory detritus of our perishable selves and our world.”