Matteo Massagrande, born 1959. "Harlequin" Mixed media on cardboard. Dimensions cm 35x25, frame 51x41. Label of the Galleria Stefano Forni, Bologna, on the back. Biography. Matteo Massagrande is one of the major exponents of the new Italian figurative art. His paintings depict rooms full of distant echoes, forgotten voices, memories and nostalgia, shadows and mists, a past that refuses to be forgotten. His interiors are abandoned places, inhabited by only one true protagonist: light. A soft, turbid, dusty and fluctuating light, which sometimes enters forcefully through the enormous windows that open onto immense spring gardens, while at other times it insinuates itself delicately through the cracks. She inhabits those rooms, transforming their emptiness into an intense and vivid presence. As the artist says: "absence is not the opposite of presence, but rather a place without disturbances or distractions. A fundamental condition for discovering the hidden essence. A present, where thought can reach its maximum strength: creation". Born in 1959 in Padua. He began exhibiting in 1973 participating in group exhibitions and competitions throughout Italy, where he immediately obtained numerous awards. Parallel to his painting activity, he developed his graphic activity, which began in 1974, highlighted by his presence in numerous prestigious group exhibitions. Some of his engravings have become part of the Cabinet of Prints of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. He has had over one hundred solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad. His works are found in numerous museums, churches, public and private collections. Among the latest exhibitions, the solo exhibition Canto dolente d’amore (last day of Van Gogh) at the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza as part of the large exhibition Van Gogh. Between wheat and sky (2017) and the exhibition In my room: artists paint the interior 1950-NOW, at the The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville in the United States (2018). He regularly participates in trade fairs in Italy and abroad. He lives and works between Padua and Hajós (Hungary).