The Sassi of Matera, carved into the tuff: the architecture of taking away, the root of his painting.
Artist and architect · Pietrapertosa
Cesare
Maremonti
“To be different from myself every single day: that is how I feel alive.”“Art does not lie: art does not need technique, it needs the soul.”“Art must make you think, must give beauty, must give joy.”“We must let the adult we have become be a child again.”
The vision
“From the Sassi of Matera I learned the architecture of taking away. And in painting, to take away means to simplify: the mark, the colours, the gesture.”
Selection
Works
Art and place
“What I love above all is to stir consciences, to give emotion to those who look at my painting.”
Cesare Maremonti
The artist
Biography
Born in Matera in 1966, Cesare Maremonti graduated in architecture in Florence, specialising in industrial design and planning. After periods spent between Russia, Finland and Amsterdam, in 2002 he returned to Matera, where he founded Archdesignstudio, a workshop of ideas spanning design, architecture and painting. Today he lives and works in Pietrapertosa, in the Lucanian Dolomites.
His painting portrays the landscape as a “set of geometric forms, coloured marks, solids and voids”. Oil, collage and drawing intertwine into faces, eyes and essential figures: a continuous dialogue between being an architect and being a painter.
Over thirty years of research his works have been shown in galleries and museums across Italy — from Florence to Milan, Rome to Turin — and abroad: Spain, Greece, Poland, Turkey, Brazil.
“Art is a very difficult ‘game’. You have to work every day, persevere and be very rigorous. Someone once said: ‘Become what you are’ — that is what I wanted to be: an artist. After more than thirty years I can say I am one, and I have understood that it takes modesty to call yourself that. This anthology is a diary of my journey through art and life. All of this was possible thanks to my father and my mother.”
From the monograph “Antologica 1990/2020 — 30 years of artistic research and life”, Matera, June 2020
In his words
Artist's words
The soul
For as long as I can remember I have looked for art everywhere: in nature, in the streets, in the cities, in my mother’s eyes. In art there is no lying: it does not need great technique, it needs the soul. When a work manages to move someone, that is when I feel I have made true art.
Taking away
Matera is an ancient city: when space was needed, people did not build — they dug, towards the bowels of the earth. That is where my “taking away rather than raising” comes from: in architecture as in painting, taking away means simplifying the sign. By simplifying, you reach the viewer better.
The blank canvas
You start with one idea and often end up doing something else entirely: the most interesting ideas come out of mistakes. Making art is living in other worlds, where there are no wars and no envy. It is just you and your blank canvas: it is like a psychologist — you sit there and listen to what it tells you.
“It takes great modesty to call oneself an artist: it is a way of living, a way of understanding the world and absorbing it with the greatest sensitivity.”“Freedom has a price: it comes with time, from within. Your first judge is yourself.”“For years you wait for something that is neither success nor fame: simply the wish to be understood through those signs, those colours, those shapes.”
Behind the scenes
In the studio
The daily gesture: colours, paper and marks waiting to become a work.
“Through colours you can express not only light, but also shapes, lines, points and surfaces.”“You start with one idea and then everything changes: often the most interesting ideas come out of mistakes.”“Making art means living in other worlds: it is just you and your blank canvas — you listen to what it tells you.”
Journey
Exhibitions
2022Supplica a mia madre — homage to Pier Paolo PasoliniRoma
2022Origini in cammino (travelling)Basilicata
2021Passaggi&Paesaggi (solo show)Convento di San Francesco, Pietrapertosa
2021Infratture (solo show)Galleria Gurrado, Matera
2020Arte in Stazione — Paesaggi Anemici (solo show)Miglionico railway station
2020Apulia Contemporary Art Prize — 2nd prizePuglia
2019Uomini di Terra (solo show)Palazzo Arcieri Bitonti, San Mauro Forte
2018CONdiVISIONI, with Baj, Levi, Nespolo, Paladino, RotellaFerrara Art Gallery, Matera
2016Di-segni della memoria (solo show)Circolo La Scaletta, Matera
2015ZERO (solo show)La Rocca medieval fortress, Umbertide
2015fuoridilingua / estirandolingua — Italy/BrazilMuseu da Cidade, Recife
2014il rovescio della medaglia (solo show)Art065, Pesaro
Rimini-Europa International Prize 2014 · artistic director of the Festa della Bruna, Matera 2015 · group shows in Florence, Milan, Turin, Cefalù, Bodrum and Istanbul.
Contact
Let's talk about art
For information on the works, availability, exhibitions and collaborations.
Ask the AIs about me: ChatGPT · Claude · Perplexity · Copilot