Collage – Marco Santini

Born during Covid, out of his deep dive into the lives and practices of modern masters in the West, the Signature Series is entirely unique to Marco Santini. who calls this new category of art ‘Illuminism’. 

For the works in this series, Santini takes rare, signed artist books from Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Georgia O’Keefe, and transforms them, cover to cover, extracting the very soul of the book, into a single visual story. While these three-dimensional artworks might seem like they’re a type of collage, they are so much more than that. In Santini’s words, “With collage you can cut things out and move them around. But in my Signature Series works, a majority of what you see is the page exactly where it was when the artist signed the work. I’m not moving that much around. I’m trying to keep it as authentic as possible. And that’s why I believe the works actually shine a light on the essence of the book, and on the artist and their works in a very respectful way to understand who they were and to bring their story to light.”

Read more about this on MAP’s Read section here.