Giorgio Petracci

Originally from Fermo, on the Adriatic coast, Giorgio Petracci studied in Bologna and then moved to Paris, where he currently lives and works. The environment in which he grew up shapes his work. He has a deep connection with his roots and the coastline. This stretch of seafront does not only represent his birthplace, but more deeply embodies a rare and authentic cultural basin, escaping the standardization and smoothing out that has prevailed for several decades, and which makes the most frequented tourist spots the mirror of a consumer society that relates to itself. As the artist himself says about these places: "it is as if the local population had preserved these places to give themselves the luxury of breathing".

Giorgio Petracci photographs, paints and sculpts. His photographs immortalise coastal landscapes and linger on details: buildings, boats, laundry drying in the sun or other small, simple but incredibly evocative elements, all cradled by the same wind that gives the artist a pleasant sense of belonging..

In 2011, he started to paint. His paintings are closely related his photographs. They reveal a desire to transcend the image itself, towards a more intimate and elusive dimension. The artist uses organic or mineral forms through colours that are sometimes light, sometimes vivid, which offer themselves to us in all their brilliance. This search for freedom of composition is linked to the choice of medium. Giorgio Petracci chooses wood as a support for his sculptures but also for his paintings. Trained since childhood to work with wood by his grandfather, this material is not only the support for the pictorial intervention, it becomes a living material in his hands.

Giorgio Petracci's works « are passages through which one enters his inner world »1. The landscape of his childhood, the Adriatic, thus becomes a vehicle for expressing the movements of the soul; the collective history of the place, a crossroads of cultures and memories stirred up by the sea, is inextricably intertwined with the personal history of the artist.

1 LAPPERIER Mattia, «Adriatico», extrait du catalogue d’exposition, 2022