Falena (2004) Painting by Franco Marras

FRANCO MARRAS

PAINTING
Franco Marras, an established artist in the panorama of European figurative art, owes his success to an apparent restlessness that flows into the dramaturgy of the brush, as he himself likes to say.
He carries out an investigation into the reality that is closest to him, with a clear and immediate style, decidedly hyperrealist, and which is influenced by a theatrical imprint to be completed with the influence of photography, but also of the pictorial tradition of his country. His paintings represent people of his age and are not taken full-length or half-length: it is his friends and family who become "saints" or "heroes", often called only by name. They all have the same expression; serious, indecipherable, with a hint of restlessness in their gaze, which seems to be the mark of a generation. It is precisely from here that the artist's work draws strength: from this "generational" mark, where eroticism, sacredness and care for the image merge, highlighted by an elegance that is only apparently casual. The preparation of the canvases and boards is long and methodical, based on the "classic" dictates that we find in painting treatises; each painting is the result of a careful preparatory phase consisting of pencil sketches and possible photographs. This young "creative" is undoubtedly an aesthete, a virtuoso of painting, who over the years has refined the study of the human body with medical treatises and with life studies, which have undoubtedly served him to master in an excellent manner every muscle of the human body.

Franco Marras was born in Sassari on 14.08.1969.
In 1988 he obtained the diploma of high school in applied art in the section of metal art and goldsmithing with a score of 55/60mi.
In 1992 he obtained the Academic Diploma of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts of Sassari with a score of 110 cum laude, presenting a "thesis" entitled: "Sacredness and Eroticism".

He currently lives and works in Porto Cervo.


Critics define his paintings as "Fashion Painting". In fact, the cut of the images, the use of a particular background, and rare garments come from fashion photography. Perhaps the success of Marras, who confesses to loving Michelangelo and Caravaggio in the same way he loves Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber, is due to the fact that he is a boy like many others, fascinated by fashion, cinema, advertising, and does not hide it behind the intellectualism of which he is permeated part of the current contemporary art.
The critic Marco Rinaldi, says of him: "the neo-Mannerist approach of Franco Marras is pushed in many of his works to the threshold of a kitsch ...

• Nationality: ITALY
• Date of birth : 1969
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Italian Artists