The Italian artist Michele Petrelli paints decontextualized figures and portraits that float on diluted backgrounds, immersed in an aura of mystery, in a style he associates with modern Impressionism.He works in oil and acrylic painting as well as digital painting, using tools such as the software Krita and a Huion drawing tablet.
He has painted since childhood and graduated from art school in 1991, later earning a technical designer qualification in 1999.In his own words, painting “becomes art the moment technique is placed at the service of profound content”, and “if I have nothing to say through art, then I prefer to say nothing at all”.Since 2008 he has lived with his partner away from the city, painting prolifically.
Petrelli is drawn to decadent and introspective subjects rather than polished, realistic ones, painting mysterious, disturbing characters and humorous transfigurations of ordinary people into deities or monsters. In his portraits, layers of paint are often disordered and do not follow the lines of the visible drawing beneath them, so that figures emerge from a crossover of painting and drawing.
In 2022 he collaborated with the Tezos NFT artist Bruta on the fxhash generative drop Bellissimas, which altered the form and color of Bruta's prerendered painted layers and added purely generative visuals on top.
