Gianmarco Montesano

Gian Marco Montesano was born in Trento in 1949. He studied at the Salesian seminary of Valdocco. He decided not to follow his ecclesiastic vocation that was not strong as the artistic and the intellectual one. 

In the 70’s this inspiration guided him to Bologna and then to Paris where he had the opportunity to meet Gilles Deleuze e Jean Baudrillard. The initiation of Montesano’s painting started while he was a seminarist in Valdocco. At the beginning of the 70’s his masterpieces are reproductions of the Madonna and of all the holy images, that remainded him of his spiritual experience. He painted them, making them bigger and putting them in a postmodern vision, as in the traditional popular painting, but with a connotation of conceptual and theorical meaning. Va

rious are the paintings he dedicated to Turin and to the memory of his father who was an eccentric worker in the “avanspettacolo”, a theatrical, comical show that borned between the 30’s and the 50’s. From the 80’s to the 90’s Montesano is considered in a revival pictorical current named “Medialism”, of Neopop and comics imprinting, but he was a precursor of this one. 

Montesano is not just a well-known artist, but also a theatrical director, his company, named Florian, has showed in Italy, Rome in particular, and Hungary. 

He showed worldwide as solo exhibition as in studio d'Arte Raffaelli, Trento (1999, 2004), in Annina Nosei Gallery, New York (2002), in Guidi & schoen arte contemporanea, genoa (2004) and in galleria umberto di marino Arte Contemporanea, Naples (1998, 2002, 2003, 2004).  He has also showed in many group exhibitions as in oxart Gallery in Verona (2002) in Tirana’s Biennal (2001), in “skin” Daniele Ugolin’s Gallery (2005), in “Italian Art” at Palazzo Reale, Milan (2007),  He lives between Trento, Paris and Bologna.