Artwork

Drawings and paintings by Massimiliano De Leo

His artistic research begins before the mark: it begins with the gaze.

In 2005, in Rome, he starts to observe art up close. During those years he undertakes an internship at the studio of architect Massimiliano Fuksas, where he absorbs a way of conceiving design as an expressive, sculptural gesture — an influence that stays with him. In his free time he frequents the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, studying the works of masters and students alike, letting the city’s great figurative tradition settle into a personal language.

In 2008, in Rivoli, the gaze becomes gesture: a pupil of painter Amelia Alba Argenziano, he learns oil painting and the palette-knife technique, building matter through layers, density and light.

Since then his work has lived on a threshold — between architecture, art and research. Designed space and painted canvas become two modes of the same inquiry: to measure, to compose, to discover. Not separate disciplines, but a single exercise of the gaze.