MIRCO MARCHELLI
b. 1963, ItalyMirco Marchelli is an Italian contemporary artist and musician who creates texturally rich geometric and rhythmic paintings from humble materials, often found, and augmented with cement, clay, and wax. He draws upon the Italian Arte Povera tradition, transforming everyday materials into vestigial bricolage objects.
Early Years
Born in 1963 in Novi Ligure, Italy, Marchelli’s artistic journey began with music. He played the trumpet in a band for Paolo Conte, the Italian singer and pianist. He taught music in Ovada until the early 1990s, when he began working in the visual arts. Marchelli continues to live and work in Ovada, where his studios are situated beneath the dome of the Assumption and at the San Lorenzo farmhouse.
Style and technique
Marchelli’s musical foundation infuses his art practice with a sense of improvisation, harmony and rhythm. He opts to work with found materials as grounds for his artworks, preferring the history and patina of the past lives imbued in the fragments. The artist sources remnants of furniture, books, boxes, utensils and other substrates from markets or second-hand stores. The object trouvè then informs the subsequent paintings, which are iteratively constructed with different materials such as fabric, paper, wax, chalk, cement, mortar, ceramic, and all kinds of paint, resulting in layered, textured surfaces which are intuitive and poetic.
‘Poco fa’ series (2025)
These small works made from ceramic, paper, fabric, and wax utilise simple leaf-shaped geometries in a tetrad composition, showcasing Marchelli’s mastery over material, form and colour.
Ad libitum o senza tempo (2025)
This composition exemplifies the musical influence in Marchelli’s work. ‘Ad libitum’—the phrase from which we derive ‘ad lib’, highlights the improvisational approach to Marchelli’s artmaking. This painting features blue and yellow diamond forms overlaid with smaller stamplike tiles collaged atop the wooden panel.
Giardino d’amore (2024)
Entitled ‘garden of love’, this work features integrated framing constructed with white cement, which walls in smaller checkerboard panels painted with bright hues. The resultant composition, paired with its title, evokes an aerial view of a garden, the vibrancy of flora, and the geometry of planted beds.
Notable Exhibitions
Marchelli has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions. Notable solo exhibitions include:
- Se fosse sol da far, Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2025)
- An Echo of Flowers, Hilde Vandaele Gallery, Watou, Belgium (2024)
- Lieti Motivi, Museo Archeologico, Acqui Terme, Italy (2023)
- Motivi di Gioia, Alzueta Gallery, Madrid, Spain (2023)
His work has also been featured in group exhibitions such as:
- Still Dancing, Ingleby, Edinburgh, UK (2024)
- Learn But The Letters Forme(d) By Heart, Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon, USA (2022)
- Futuruins, with Museo Hermitage di San Pietroburgo, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2019)
Mirco Marchelli does not maintain a website, but he updates an Instagram account.
Mirco Marchelli FAQs
Who is Mirco Marchelli?
Mirco Marchelli is an Italian artist and composer known for his assemblage artworks that inform everyday materials with an improvisational sensibility, creating timeless vestigial art objects.
What is Mirco Marchelli’s most well known work?
While Marchelli has produced numerous notable works, Parole Povere (2024) and Ad libitum o senza tempo (2025) are great examples of the artist’s work, showcasing his distinctive approach to material assemblage.
What influenced Mirco Marchelli’s art?
Marchelli’s art is influenced by his musical background, the Arte Povera movement, and the use of everyday materials to explore themes of memory, time, and the poetic aspects of the mundane.
Ocula | 2025
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