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NARRATIVA is the new great solo exhibition by Francesco De Grandi

"When I was in high school I used to draw comics, but my professors couldn't tell if they were comics or they were paintings. I used to make boards that got bigger and bigger, almost always self-contained, with very few vignettes. So that led to the question, what are they? They were actually paintings, however, done as if they were comics.... Later, however, the reverse happened: when I started to be a painter, everyone said, "but they look like comics!"

The aptitude for storytelling has always been very strong in my painting. For a time it was a great taboo, even a source of embarrassment, seen as something negative, as a limitation. Painting had long ceased to be representational and had moved to positions far removed from the idea of narrative.

But for me it continued and continues to be a very strong need. When I paint I tell everything: the time, the season, the events, nothing escapes at my narrative self. Today we are witnessing a great return of narrative in painting internationally. As if there is a need, in this hyper narrated age of ours where false narratives are the order of the day, to tell something true, and painting in this sense still retains a form of honesty. A painting is a narration that has a body, a presence. And it is a form of truth precisely because it is present, it is there and it inhabits a space. Everything after that, all its reproductions, are all simulacra, but the real object is living, like being around the fire and hearing a story told by a wise old man.

That's why I called the exhibition NARRATIVA.

In the gallery we will see narrative paintings, stories that belong to the collective memory of man. Myths, legends, novellas that have come to us through testimony and storytelling. Which have crossed time and space and are still urgent and capable of creating worlds."

(Conversation between Francesco and Tiziana, November 11, 2023 at Piazza Sant’Anna)