Giovanni Grassi
Giovanni Grassi's artistic career can be traced back to the early 1970s.
During that period, still being a student at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, he started working as an assistant at the OB Group in Milan; one of the leading group of that specific interdisciplinary research area which at the time was called Visual Research.
In the three years spent alongside Giuseppe Becca, his former high school professor and leading figure of the OB Group, Giovanni Grassi has the opportunity to make wide different experiences, deepening the photographic technique at various levels: through research, documentation, advertising and collaborating in the creation of videotapes.
Within the OB Group he collaborated in the fields of graphics, design, decoration, aesthetics and museography research; with a particular focus on the use of the television medium in atrworks’ interpretation.
Through this experience he came into contact with a vast theoretical-critical apparatus that ranges from perception theory to semiology and from phenomenology to mass media.
These years, that could be considered his artistic training period, in which human relationships, practical and theoretical experiences were intertwined, have marked from that moment on the character and mind of Giovanni Grassi and represent the founding nucleus of his whole following artistic experience.
In 1974, along with Federico Vaccari, he founded the GV studio where he will deal with advertising graphic design and photography.
In 1976 he began teaching Art Education in the State middle school in Milan.
In 1985, he and Francesco Zaccone created an urban action entitled “Per-corso Garibaldi” with a critique by Francesca Pensa.
In 1997, at the Spazio Aleph he presented the exhibition entitled “Chiasma” with a critique by Francesco Tedeschi.
In 2000, as in a journey backwards, Grassi made a sort of return to the origins, starting the experience of painting "en plein air". Thus were born the first landscapes of Brittany, a region that enchanted him and where, for more than a decade, he took part in several exhibitions. Among the places that have hosted his works are Locquirec, Guimaec, the Chapelle Saint-Antoine in Plouezoc’h and Plousganou.
Campagne à Plestin-les-Grèves (Bretagne)
La rivière du Douvern (Bretagne)
Etang Locquirec (Bretagne)
In 2006 he switched to high school teaching of Drawing and Art History, as of 2010 at the Vittorio Veneto Scientific State High School.
In 2008 he founded along with a group of painters the Zamenhof Gallery in Milan.
In February 2009 the gallery hosted its first anthological exhibition with a critique by Davide Corsetti, a compendium of 15 years of artistic activity.
Starting with 2009 his pictorial research developed an anti-naturalistic dimension, where color and matter take on an almost ontological meaning, as his series of textured works on paper shows.
Legno dipinto
La roche tombée 1 (Bretagne)
La roche tombée 2 (Bretagne)
In 2011 Giovanni Grassi took part in the “V Biennale di Pero” with an urban installation that introduced the iron series of works.
In November 2011 at the “Studio Raffaello Giolli Arte Contemporanea” premiered his exhibition "Iron, the color of being" with a critique by Tommaso Grassi.
With this series of works, Grassi went further in his research, aimed at putting the expressive power of iron in a tighter relation with the "color-matter" element.
In the same path of research took place the collaboration with Egle Reggio for "The iron and the canvas" exhibition at the “Studio Raffaello Giolli Arte Contemporanea” in April 2012, with acritique by Tommaso Grassi.
In April 2013 he inaugurated a solo exhibition at the “Biblioteque Galilée de Oissel” in Normandy (France) that retraced the last stages of his artistic journey.
In 2014 premiered the group show in collaboration with Egle Reggio and Gianluca Arienti at Arci Bellezza Center in Milan.
In 2015, Galleria Spazio Libero in Milan hosted another duo show along with Egle Reggio.
Since 2016 he has been extending his artistic activity in Normandy with particular focus on Rouen, taking part in various exhibitions.
His works are exhibited at the Daniel Duchoze Contemporary Art Gallery.
Along his career he had critique by: Francesca Pensa, Francesco Tedeschi, Maria Lombardo, Marina Di Stasio, Marie Laure Bourgeois, Fabrice Grossi, Vigilio Patarini, Davide Corsetti, Giuseppe Giacobino, Tommaso Grassi.