Giovanni Mercatelli

Giovanni Mercatelli (b. 1996, Bologna, Italy) is a figurative painter based in Bologna, Italy, working in oil, acrylic, and collage on canvas. His paintings unfold through rich, physical layers, where an image is built, disrupted, and rebuilt, allowing earlier gestures and abandoned attempts to remain visible beneath the surface. Mercatelli works intuitively, following the painting as it develops rather than beginning with a fixed plan, treating the process as a battle between himself and the canvas whose outcome he refuses to know in advance.

His path to painting has been equally open and unconventional, shaped by studies in Industrial Design in the Netherlands and a master’s degree in Industrial Ecology at Leiden University. Mercatelli first lived in Key West in 2020, and has since built a growing presence there, drawn back by the island’s free spirit and tropical light.

In 2025, he held solo exhibitions with Dal Mondo Piccolo at Galleria Forni, Bologna, and Drifting in the Keys at Gallery on Greene, Key West, followed by a presentation at Arte Fiera, Bologna, in 2026.