Nicola Samorì, Italian sculptor and painter from Ravenna. Photography © Michela Ravaglia

1.Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

I breed and torture images. In the beginning there is a Romanesque church, a skinned rabbit and a lot of plowed land. Everything else took shape from these lashes in the eye.

2.What are your favorite museums in the world? Why?

One above all: the Bode Museum in Berlin. I have no idea how many times I have entered that temple, but each time I come out with something to chew with my mind. And since I’m not a passive spectator, the museum that feeds me the most is my favorite.

Nubifregio, 2010. © Roberto Bigano

3.How important are social networks in your business? And which platform do you prefer and why?

For years I have the feeling of being under siege and still believe I can do without it. So far my impermeability to social networks has proved strong, but I’m starting to give in. So I’ll be able to answer the second question soon.

4.What are your future projects? 

I recently inaugurated a project at the Mart Museum in Rovereto dedicated to the figure of Saint Lucia, a group of women where painting oscillates between the chiseled detail and the disappearance of shape, a few steps from the solemn and tortured Burial of Saint Lucia by Caravaggio. Scheduled for January is my anthological exhibition at Palazzo Fava in Bologna: twenty years of work exhibited in the forge where the Carraccis revolution took shape.

  • Maddalena, 2010. ©Daniele Casadio
  • Ultimo sangue, 2019. ©Rolando Paolo Guerzoni
  • Indovina, 2017. ©Uwe Walter
  • Black Square, 2020, Made in Cloister, Napoli. ©Danilo Donzelli
  • Lienzo, 2014. ©Rolando Paolo Guerzoni
  • Sciapode mariano, 2016. ©Rolando Paolo Guerzoni
  • Malafonte, 2018, Galerie Eigen+Art, Berlin. ©Uwe Walter
  • Lucia, 2019. ©Uwe Walter
  • Secondo natura, 2019. ©Rolando Paolo Guerzoni

5.To create greater engagement among museums, artists and professionals, do you have any advice for cultural projects such as #MuseumWeek?

Do not follow my example in any way.

Interview by Fabio Pariante, journalist

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Nicola Samorì (Forlì, 1977) is an Italian painter and sculptor who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna.

Between painting, sculpture and engravings, from a faithful copy of works mostly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the artist with decisive and profound interventions, peels and scratches the work to reinterpret its meaning giving voice to the restlessness of today’s society: the lights and shadows of the paintings of the past to tell those of the present.

Winner of some prizes, Samorì paints on copper and precious stones, and among tables, canvases and frescoes, his works have been exhibited all over the world: in Milan, New York, Perth, Napoli, Caotun Township, Leipzig, Rome, Copenhagen, Berlin, Bologna, London, Osnabrück, Belgrade and at the Venice Biennale. Nicola Samorì lives and works in Bagnacavallo, Ravenna.