Nicola Samorì

MONITOR

Nicola Samorì (Forlì,1977), lives and works in Bagnacavallo, Emilia Romagna, Italy. Samorì is an italian painter and sculptor famous for his dark, Baroque-inspired oil paintings that are skillful reproductions of classical portraits and still lifes on canvas, wood, or copper, purposefully destroyed to negate classical representation and question painting itself. His process entails “skinning” his painted figures with a palette knife or diluent, layering another image on top, and repeating the process until images fuse and signs of erasure and scratching dominate the reworked surface. Samori explains that exposing the inside of the paint by removing layers of “skin” with a scalpel reveals “a freshness and an intensity unknown in the outer tones.”

Dittico del deserto, 2023
Oil on travertine. 40×75 cm.