About

Marco Rizzotti (b. 1983, Italy) is a contemporary figurative painter living and working in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

With a long history as a commercial traditional sculptor and an extensive career as a 3D character designer in the gaming and tech industry, his practice is grounded in a spatial understanding of form, light and volume that carries directly into his painting.

He works primarily in oil on canvas, using scenes observed from life and his own photography. His paintings focus on transitional spaces and moments of quiet disconnection in contemporary urban life. Through cinematic light, restrained narrative and painterly realism, he explores the tension between physical presence and emotional distance.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Transitional Spaces and Social Dissociation

My paintings begin with ordinary places that become psychologically charged through observation: laundromats, cafes, museum halls, public transport, stadium interiors and waiting spaces. These are environments designed for movement, gathering or pause, yet I am drawn to the moments when a person appears physically present while mentally elsewhere.

I work primarily in oil on canvas, using scenes I encounter in daily life and photographs I take myself. The photograph gives me the structure of a real moment, but the painting is not intended as a literal record. I adjust expression, colour, emphasis and atmosphere to bring forward the emotional condition that first made the scene meaningful to me.

The recurring subject in my work is the distance that can exist between people even when they share the same space. A figure may sit among others, wait near a crowd or rest within a public interior, but remain absorbed in a private world. This state is not necessarily loneliness. It can also be reflection, exhaustion, protection or a temporary withdrawal before returning to life around us.

Light is central to how I construct that tension. Warm and cool passages, artificial illumination, reflections and window barriers divide the image into different emotional zones. Windows first allowed me to place the viewer outside a scene, looking in at figures who were close but unreachable. The series has since expanded beyond the literal window to include other thresholds: a train journey, a pause in a museum, the interval inside a laundromat, or the charged stillness of a football ground away from the action.

My approach is rooted in figurative realism, but I want the paint to remain visible. I simplify forms into deliberate planes, soften or sharpen edges according to attention, and resist explaining every detail. The narrative is left open enough for viewers to recognise something from their own experience.

Rather than depicting dramatic events, I paint the quieter intervals around them. I am interested in what these in-between moments reveal: the private emotional space each person carries, and the fragile boundary between participation and detachment in contemporary life.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Group exhibition, The Holy Art Gallery, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 16-18 May 2026

Group exhibition, The Holy Art Gallery, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 6-8 February 2026

July Exhibition 2023, S.B. Art Studios, The Archives, High Cross Centre, London, United Kingdom, 28 July 2023

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