The MEAM is hosting a selection of works by Roberto Ferri, 'the new Caravaggio'
The Italian painter updates and transgresses the Baroque style through erotic themes, hyperrealism, and using the chiaroscuro technique in his works.
Amongst its temporary exhibitions, the Museu Europeu d'Art Modern (MEAM) is hosting Introspettiva, a selection of works by Italian painter Roberto Ferri (Tarento, 1978), who is considered the Caravaggio — or the new Giorgio de Chirico — of our times due to a style strongly drawing from baroque, neoclassical art and pre-Raphaelite artists' influence. The photographic hyperrealism of his brush has earned him significant commissions of sacred art. He has painted, for example, scenes from the Stations of the Cross for the Sicilian cathedral of Noto and has portrayed Pope Francis. In addition, his canvases have been featured in different films and television series, such as The man who sold his skin and Gomorrah.
The sample at the MEAM is made up of 46 works — thirty paintings and sixteen illustrations — in which Ferri reproduces, with meticulous technique, the anatomy of heroic and triumphant characters who move between lights and shadows. In 2018, the artist was the focus of a monographic exhibition in Milan and Palermo named Oscura Luce.
Ferri's paintings are immersed in romanticism, academicism and symbolism with a raw, provocative discourse charged with an eroticism that is both dramatic and captivating. His style, a "radical anachronism", has earned him praise and enthusiastic reviews that have described him as a "passionate academicist" or a "carnal Salvador Dalí". The artist explores nudity with oneiric elements that deal with dreams, spirituality and mythology, but also with what is profane. For all these reasons, his work is considered daring and disturbing, with scenes of great passion, beauty and formal sensitivity. However, they also reflect an underlying tension between the ancient and the modern, and between the academicism of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, for example, and the most transgressive surrealism.
Introspettiva is available at the MEAM until October 3. General admissions are 9 euros; reduced admission, 7 euros. Both give access to the temporary exhibition ModPortrait 2020 on until September 5 and the permanent collection. You can get them at the box office or directly here.