The Gold Standard: the measure of being human
Massimo Scognamiglio reflects on The Gold Standard, a new cycle in which painting returns to synthesis and gold becomes a measure of beauty, power, violence and human fragility.
Read →Magazine · Path 01
Contemporary art and image
Painting, photography and cinema as sites of tension. From Bacon and Hirst to David Lynch and Punk Aristocracy, current stories meet the works, exhibitions and obsessions of my practice.
Punk Aristocracy returns to Cosenza
On Friday 9 October 2026 at 7:30 pm, Massimo Scognamiglio’s Punk Aristocracy photography exhibition opens at BlackShedBar in Cosenza, marking ten years since the project began in 2016.
Read →Inside Exibart’s 222: a map of Italian art to watch
Why Exibart’s 222 has become a reference publication for reading artists of cultural and commercial interest in Italy, what it can actually measure and why selection does not amount to a financial promise.
Read →A room to stay: Via Savoia, art and the housing crisis
My Via Savoia portraits, taken in Cosenza on 2 January 2019, meet Italy’s housing crisis. A path from the Aquarius to Terra! and MACRO Asilo.
Read →Affordable art: collecting original works under €5,000
What affordable art really means: market data, fairs and practical criteria for choosing original works under €1,000, €2,000 and €5,000, with an independent reading of Massimo Scognamiglio’s practice.
Read →Text inside the painting: a lesson from Basquiat
A sourced reading of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s lesson on words and painting, followed by a personal reflection on Inside I’m Free and the Cycle of Rooms.
Read →A painted body is never only a body
Jenny Saville’s Ca’ Pesaro exhibition and Francis Bacon’s example open a personal reflection on the Cycle of Rooms, two mixed-media works on canvas and the trajectory of an Italian mid-career artist.
Read →Punk turns fifty. Punk Aristocracy turns ten
In 1976 punk broke with the rock establishment. Ten years ago, with Punk Aristocracy, I photographed what happened next: rebellion absorbed by fashion, luxury and television without entirely losing its force. A tenth-anniversary edition of the project will soon be shown in Cosenza.
Read →Damien Hirst, the painting or the token: choosing what to destroy
In 1998 I presented La Coscienza Luccicante at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, an artist’s CD-ROM in which pixels and interactivity coexisted with my painting. Damien Hirst’s The Currency imposed a choice instead: keep the painting or the digital token and destroy the other. The violence of that either-or interests me more than the technology.
Read →Francis Bacon and the portrait that does not return a face
In Mindful Portraits I look for what happens between me and another person before the shutter is released; in the Strappi I begin with photographs already worn by the public gaze. The National Portrait Gallery’s Human Presence assembled more than fifty works by Francis Bacon, alongside the torn and crumpled photographs he worked from.
Read →David Lynch, when cinema begins before cinema
In my fashion films and in photographs such as Liquid Sky, the image does not simply illustrate a story: it often comes first. Fondation Cartier’s fortieth-anniversary dossier returns to The Air Is on Fire, the exhibition that revealed David Lynch’s paintings, photographs and drawings. This is where his cinema discloses its material origins.
Read →When art enters the healthcare system
In the Strappi and the Cycle of Rooms I used the language of mental distress without turning it into consoling decoration. WHO Europe and the European Union are now working to bring art and culture into healthcare systems—not as ornament, but as practices to be designed, evaluated and made accessible.
Read →From theme to project
The body and the mental condition
Cycle of Rooms interiors, the torn faces of Gli Strappi and reflections on art and mental health connect vulnerability, space and perception.
Explore the project →The practice in books
Tre Uomini: Nessuno è perfetto
Tre Uomini takes a question about human nature and everyday evil into fiction.
Explore the book and editions →