Massimo Giannoni Italian, b. 1954

Italian painter Massimo Giannoni paints pictures of collections of books, systematically arranged for display, reference and consumption in bookshops and libraries. They are representations of singular spaces, designed for thoughtful consultation and communion with a world of ideas, entertainment and information. These images describe the structural underpinnings of civilisation, a physical and architectural space to contain the life of the mind.

Giannoni deploys a lively palette. His handling is loose and deft. He builds up layers and accretions of thickly-applied paint over a carefully-drafted underpainting of the perspective plan of his chosen location. Stacks, files and piles of books fill the serried ranks of regularly ordered bookcases. The scene is described by streaks, patches and clusters of multi-coloured impasto. This rich and busy surface articulates a visceral delight in the materiality of paint, which, in turn, brings to mind the tactile excitement anticipated in the touch and feel of much sought after manuscripts and documents.

The painter evokes a particular quality of light. He illuminates his spaces with a suffused and soft glow, whether emanating from the sun shining through a window or artificial sources like lamps and chandeliers. Such subtly modulated lighting gives these interiors a sanctified aspect reminiscent of the clerestory and the church and points to associated qualities of lucidity and enlightenment. Giannoni makes a play for some sense of equivalence in experience between the bookshop and the sanctuary.

The artist presents us with a simulacrum, replacing reality with its representations. Here are the painted signs of books, unreadable but transformed into a comprehensible image that encompasses the idea of the written and what it, in turn, signifies. We are asked to make a connection – with the library of ideas in all its multitude of guises, in all its multitude of languages and its awesome, sublime confusion, ours to attempt to decipher.

Massimo Giannoni is a painter of books and, in particular, a multitude of books that are housed in specific libraries, stores and collections. These are painted in a colourful, representational...