maximilian damico

maximilian damico

Prague, Czech Republic

About maximilian damico

STATEMENT: Italian watercolorist Maximilian Damico paints primarily on location. He observes city sidewalks and intersections, looking for not the most famous scenes but the most interesting. With quick, lively brushstrokes, Maximilian captures the energy and mood of cities whether in the rain, gloom, or rush hour. The frenetic quality of city life doesn’t detract from the beauty of each scene. Maximilian’s gestural technique instead infuses liveliness in each artwork, a liveliness that makes being in a big city a never-ending thrill. PROCESS: I usually work on location, just sometimes I do several sketches of the same theme and then I go to complete it in the studio...usually I do finish a painting one going on (this is essential in my technique). I do not mind about famous sight seen, but I like walk in some place to find an aesthetic details or an interesting game shadow/light. Basically I approach the painting with a separate palette warm and cold colour, the contrast lets have an interesting three-dimensional and plastic effect; I try every time to move the brush as fast as I can, to catch the movement, that I am seeing in reality, on the paper...that lets the painting get the energy and the vibrations that I am constantly looking for in my style; I can use a very wet paper and brush full of water sometimes I use very dry colour......I never use very tiny size brushes for small details...but I am interested in the big block of masses, their contrast make the beauty in a painting. BIO: I was born in south Italy, and took courses of painting in Academy of Fine Arts in Naples; after the Fine Art 'Diploma', I left south Italy to have broader contact with the international Art scene, following different routes: as Barcelona, London, Paris, New York and Prague: where I maturated my own style made by semi abstract elements and expressionist executions and techniques. I spent 5 years in this kind of wandering life, always looking for areas of visibility, collaboration and contracts with Art Galleries. Meanwhile I was achieving and accomplishing a good number of success and desires, has grown in me the germ of dissatisfaction: an awful virus in a mind of an Artist. For this reason I went back to my own village in Italy on Amalfi Coast, to dig in myself: where after a while , for joke, I applied for a watercolour art contest . Never tried this technique, but immediately I fell in love with the medium: since then It started my self taught apprenticeship with the technique made by observing and absorbing the talent of the greatest watercolour master from the past : like G Gigante and J Sargent. The Watercolour has twisted my interior world and changed the way how to look at the external world. In the last year I was awarded at 2 Art Project made in Austria and Spain and opened several workshops in Italy and Prague (Czech Rep.): that gave me the final push to carry on and struggling in the fluid world of the Watercolour!

Education:

Academy of Fine Arts Naples/Milan 2000-2005
Diploma in Painting into Academy of fine Arts in Naples; Specialist degrees in Brera, Milan.

Events:

Artists of the Year 2020 winner, for annual SAA Artists of the Year competition, SAA Newark, UK.

Exhibitions:

7th International “Love, Tolerance and Peace through Art” Watercolor Festival and Golden Brush Contest taking place from May 7 to May 10, 2020 in İzmir, Turkey.
2020 Mall Galleries London, Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2020
2019 International Watercolor Society Indonesia’s watercolour exhibition in Nusa Dua, Bali, 1-7th August 2019.
2019 Selected for the international Project and Symposium “Don`t Bite me” , in Naples organized by Blue Rihno Art and Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli.
2019 IWS International Watercolor Festival in Lima, Peru
2018 September: Awarded in the show and festival IWS (International Watercolor Society) in Costa Rica : Tropical Watercolor
2018 Art exhibition "Nur kelbetti Astana" in the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan
2018 International Symposium in Struga, Macedonia
2017 Featured in CAP project Group Show , Canvas Art Gallery, Melbourne - Australia
2017 Ex. Asilo Filangieri Galleria Contemporanea, Project Inferno Napoletano, Naples - Italy
2017 New Jorg Gallery, group exhibition , Antwerp -Belgium
2017 Featured in Contemporary Vision 7 group exhibition open call, Beers London Gallery
2016 Featured Artist in Artoo Arts Visibility, Kaohsiung - Taiwan
2015 International Art Project " Luz" Liuwke Loth Art Gallery, Malaga-Spain
2014 Residency project Galerie an der Donau, in Poechlarn, Vienna-Austria
2013 Ecklenburg Gallery, DC Baltimore, NY
2012 ArtSawa Gallery, DUBAI
2011 National Library, PRAGUE
2011 Art Studio 64, in MALAGA-Spain
2010 Infantellina contemporary Gallery, BERLIN
2009 Wannieck Gallery in BRNO: international group
2007 Brick Lane Gallery in LONDON: international group "Art in Mind"
2006 Monkdogz Urban Art Gallery in NEW YORK group show ''Foreplay''
2006 Library Bliss in BROOKLIN, NY
2006 Cincomonos Galeria in BARCELONA
2005 Art Council of ROUEN-France
2005 Galleria San Severo al Pendino NAPLES