Maximo Pellegrinetti

Maximo Pellegrinetti was born in Viareggio in 1960. He trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, where in 1982 he graduated in Sculpture. There he came into direct contact with the tradition of Apuan marble, which would remain the centre of his research.

Academic career

After teaching posts at the Accademie di Belle Arti in Palermo, Macerata and Carrara, since 1999 he has been a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where he holds the course in Technology and use of marble, stones and hardstones. At Brera he directed the Sculpture Department for many years and served as a member of the Board of Directors. He has taken part in numerous commissions, as president and as commissioner, at Academies and public competitions dedicated to the visual arts. He is president of MAGMA Cultural Association.

Marble and mark

Marble is his material of choice. Pellegrinetti thins it into slender slabs, almost paintings to hang on a wall, and onto those surfaces he incises a sharp, deep mark. His research, always attentive to the contemporary art debate and nourished by continuous experiences abroad, also opens to other materials and solutions: photography, stone-imitating elements, oil painting and marble inlay, as in Sottosopra (2024), on Chinese green marble.

Poetics

In Pellegrinetti’s work one senses an interruption in the very evolution of matter or style, which leads to a redefinition of the image. The representation is harmonious, beautiful — yet the artist deliberately chooses to disturb it, marking or censoring certain parts of the work. The gaze thus focuses on an absent beauty: on that absence, on that violation of what nature has created. Absence becomes presence.

The tension towards beauty can extend to a form of super-fiction, in which the real image gives way to the photographic or to stone-imitating materials. With a few marks — the legacy of a sculptor’s journey in search of the third dimension — Pellegrinetti constructs a space in which memory, imagination and experimentation restore universal meaning to details. He does so through recurring symbolic images, chief among them that of the house.

While sharing the Hegelian idea of the primacy of spirit over matter, for the artist thought does not oppose matter: it is its highest stage. The works of recent years investigate the very essence of matter, in its being and its appearing.

International public works

Since 1980 he has created permanent works in public spaces, in Italy and abroad. Among these: Anima senza tempo (1984, Digne, France), Il volo interrotto (1986, Aubagne), Omaggio a René Char (1990, Forcalquier), The Black Hole (1999, Icheon, South Korea), Scudo stellare (2001, Aley, Lebanon), Il cielo addosso (2005, Rome) and Portatore (2010, Vadodara, India). His works are held in public and private collections in Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, India and the United States.

Exhibitions and galleries

He has exhibited continuously since the early 1980s, in Italy and abroad: Germany, France, Spain, Wales, England, Switzerland, South Korea and Lebanon. In Paris he showed several times at the Galerie Satellite (1999, 2001, 2008, with the solo exhibition Colpo di fuoco) and in 2000 at the Galerie d’Art de Créteil. In 2013, the Marsiglione Arts Gallery in Como presented him in the two-person show Immaginario toscano, with Ivo Lombardi. In 2024 he participated in Cinque artisti, cinque amici at the Galleria Antonio Battaglia in Milan, with Corrado Bonomi, Gianni Cella, Enzo Forese and Nicola Vitale. He collaborates regularly with both galleries.

Literary activity

Alongside sculpture he cultivates writing, with short stories and fiction: Bestiario. Lui e l’animale and Bestiario. Animali tra gli altri (Meta Edizioni, 2016), La parabola del sasso (Prospero Editore, 2018) and Lella. Una vita nella storia (Meta Edizioni, 2025).

He lives and works between Milan and Pietrasanta.