Rafael Grassi

In his works, Rafael Grassi reconciles a deep attachment to pictorial material with a taste for creating an illusion of perspective and deceptive figuration. Figures serve as a starting point that gradually decomposes, freeing itself from preconceived meanings and generating a pictorial surface full of paradoxes and chromatic diversity.

Formal analogies, paradoxes, and linguistic contaminations are some of the notions evoked in his painting. Photographic images act as an initial reference, triggering a process of successive manipulation and metamorphosis that preserves the trace of a decaying image. In this transformation, formerly narrative elements emancipate themselves on the canvas, reclaiming an autonomy freed from meaning.

He has held solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Centre d’Art de Domspierre, Fonds d’Art Contemporain de Montluçon, Palazzo Mezzabarba, Pavia, and the Centro Cultural Valérie Larbaud, Vichy.

His works can be found in the Helga de Alvear Collection, Fundación Banc Sabadell, Fundación La Caixa, Olor Visual, the Italian Ministry of Culture, FRAC Auvergne, Passimessa Collection, Clermont-Ferrand, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Collection Municipale d’Art Contemporain de Vitry-sur-Seine, the Contemporary Art Collection of the Canton of Zurich, the Peter Nobel Collection, and the PRISA Collection.

Rafael Grassi – Portfolio 2026