STILL LIFE, LIVING NATURE
Giulio Malinverni
Venice, Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Project Room
From 21 April to 14 June 2026
The project Natura morta, Natura viva (Still Life, Living Nature) explores the dialogue between natural matter and artistic intervention through a series of works created on stone – marble, alabaster, and onyx. These pieces revive an ancient practice: painting on stone supports, a tradition that flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries.
In this return to the technique of stone painting, Malinverni does not seek a mere historical citation, but rather a continuity with a practice born from deep research into the relationship between painting and matter. The pictorial intervention, reduced to the essential, can transform mineral substance into a flower, a plant, feathers, or an animal’s coat – as if it were possible to lighten the material itself, altering its perception rather than its substance. The stone, with its veins and organic patterns, is no longer a simple support, but it becomes the generative principle of the image. Indeed, it is the marble’s own natural decoration that suggests forms, subjects, and compositions to the artist, guiding the brushstroke toward a kind of revelation.
Malinverni’s works thus bear witness to a constant tension between nature and artifice, between mineral stillness and biological vitality. The “still” nature comes to life thanks to a painting style that acts as a gesture, revealing and following the intrinsic qualities of the material. In this process, the distinction between still life and living nature thins until it becomes ambiguous, suggesting a profound continuity between the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Indeed, a unified vision of the natural world emerges in the artist’s work, where the hierarchies between kingdoms dissolve. Through silent and meditative images, Malinverni invites the viewer to reconsider their relationship with matter, questioning the possibility that even what we perceive as static may harbor a latent form of life. Natura morta, Natura viva thus becomes a poetic investigation into metamorphosis, perception, and the ability of art to make visible what already exists but remains hidden from view.
Giulio Malinverni (Vercelli, 1994) has lived and worked in Venice since 2013. After earning a qualification as a Restoration Technician specializing in frescoes and stone materials at the Istituto Veneto per i Beni Culturali in Venice in 2016, he graduated in Painting from the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Since 2018, he has collaborated as a tutor with professors Carlo Di Raco and Martino Scavezzon at Atelier F. His works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions and galleries in Italy and abroad, including Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa and Spazio Berlendis in Venice, MO.Ca in Brescia, the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum in Zagreb, Palazzo Reale in Milan, W.H.Y. Gallery in Hong Kong, the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art in Verona, and the Gipsoteca Canoviana in Possagno. Galleria Marignana Arte dedicated two solo exhibitions to him, the first in 2020 and the second in 2024. Winner of the Level 0 Award at Art Verona, he was a finalist for the Cairo Prize, the Rotary Prize, and the Francesco Fabbri Prize in the Emerging Art section, and has also been a multiple finalist in exhibitions organized by Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa. His works are included in the collection of the Bank of Italy, the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art in Verona, and numerous private collections.
