Marco Grassi enjoys a following of over 400,000 fans on Instagram alone. And not without a reason. This portrait artist is so realistic in his portrait paintings that it becomes difficult to distinguish them from actual photographs. The only giveaway is the out-of-place elements that each portrait displays.
Marco is adept at creating hyper-realistic portraits with unconventional awe-inspiring twists. He favours women portraits and paints them in typical studio settings. Says he, “I don’t have a specific ideal of beauty, but I prefer the soft strokes and sensual femininity, I try to capture the most delicate and light side….” However, his unusual embellishment on the bodies is what makes one look again and again at the portraits.
Even without these amazing embellishments, Marco amazes with his eye for detail. Zoom in on the skin of the portraits and you find the texture so impeccably painted that each pore, follicle, freckle, hair strand and wrinkle is easily visible. You can even feel the ultra-realistically-rendered soft fabric or the glass adornment on the figures.
Marco was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy in 1987, where he continues to live and work. He was intensely passionate about painting since childhood and went on join the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy, from where he successfully graduated. Such was his love for art that he immediately turned a full-time painter and devoted all his time to the thing he liked best. His website boldly proclaims, “Art is my life. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I cannot escape the need to paint.”
Marco uses oil paints in his paintings and spends hours perfecting each of his works. The fundamental aspects of his paintings are line quality, the delicacy in colours and external adornments on the skin. The adornments depict his interpretations of metamorphosis and contamination on human forms. The end product displays his attention to details.
About his art, he has this to say, “The magic of art is able to create a bridge between what is sensory and what is material until it comes to us. When trying to create something new, something that still manages to excite, the medium, the channel, the style, etc. are secondary”.
Marco held his first solo exhibition at the old Palazzo Calcagni in his hometown, Reggio Emilia, in December 2013. Since then, he has participated in a number of exhibitions, such as Algo Mas Que Realism VIII, that is held every year in Zaragoza, Spain. This is one of the major exhibitions on pictorial realism. He also participated in Context Art Miami in 2015.
