Gregorio Zanardi (Argentine, b. 2001) is a painter and illustrator whose figurative work blends unease and beauty, creating tension between aesthetic harmony and a subtle sense of discomfort. Working in both analog and digital formats, he treats painting as a space for freedom, play and personal exploration, letting instinct and conscious intention balance each other in the studio.,
Zanardi grew up around art: his uncle, the Córdoba-based painter Matias Tejeda, gave him painting tools and art books from an early age and left a lasting impression with his recurring use of cigarettes as a visual motif. At 18 he began selling painted caps, t-shirts and small paintings, and after a year studying Systems Engineering he left university to work as an artist full-time, a decision his uncle had encouraged. He cites Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Basquiat and David Hockney as influences, drawn especially to Bacon's pasty, violent textures and to the cheerfulness of Hockney's color.
A recurring subject in his paintings is the elderly, often depicted in casinos: silent, mysterious figures in glasses, cigarette in hand, gazing at the viewer or into empty space. His series Urban Pigeons grew out of his move from the countryside to the city, and uses the pigeon, domesticated about 10,000 years ago and later forgotten by humans, surviving on in cities, as a metaphor for how people also adapt to, and lose touch with, their own nature. The series' central piece, Vacation, just 5 minutes, uses brighter colors than the rest of the collection to depict a brief respite from a work-driven routine, which Zanardi frames as a complaint about an overworked system rather than about the people caught in it.
His work has been featured in Fakewhale's ART MARKET, an on-chain exhibition series, including its 2024 debut on Foundation and a 2024 live drop on objkt.com.,
