SofiaCacciapaglia
An Italian painter of suspended women, oversized flowers and frescoes on discarded cardboard, who says her art is “primarily about a sacred sense of life.”
Who is Sofia Cacciapaglia?
Sofia Cacciapaglia (born 1983, Ponte dell’Olio) is an Italian painter based in Milan. She graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 2006 and in 2011 was the youngest artist invited to the Italian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. She paints monumental yet weightless women, held together by touch and gaze, and outsized flowers, on canvas and on salvaged cardboard and packing paper. Her cardboard “frescoes” link the Roman wall-painting tradition to the material economy of arte povera.
- Born
- 1983, Ponte dell’Olio (Piacenza), Italy
- Trained
- Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan · graduated 2006
- First solo
- Industria SuperStudio, New York, 2007 · curated by Fabrizio Ferri
- Venice
- Youngest artist, Italian Pavilion, 54th Biennale, 2011
- Media
- Oil on canvas; acrylic on cardboard and packing paper
- Shown with
- Sapar Contemporary, New York · MABE Gallery, Geneva · Annamaria Consadori, Milan · The Palm Tree Gallery, London · Riccardo Crespi, Milan
- Online
- sofiacacciapaglia.com · @sofiacacciapaglia
Sofia Cacciapaglia is one of my favourite artists. There is a quality in her work that I find impossible to fully explain and impossible to ignore: the women in her paintings seem to exist in a place that is both deeply ancient and completely present. I am truly in love with this work.
Leila Antakly · Founder, Antakly Projects
In conversation with
Sofia Cacciapaglia
Where has your work been shown?
After my first show in New York, I exhibited my work in many spaces and galleries, such as the Riccardo Crespi Gallery; a collective exhibition curated by Alessandra Bonomo; a solo exhibition at the Museo della Permanente; Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan; Pastificio Cerere in Rome; as well as a number of charity auctions at Sotheby’s. In 2011 I was the youngest artist at the 54th Venice Biennale, where I exhibited in the Italian Pavilion.
At the moment my work is represented in London by The Palm Tree Gallery, a new gallery in Notting Hill, where my solo exhibition opened on 21 April 2017.
You have also worked with fashion and design.
Yes. With Caterina Gatta, a really talented fashion designer, who dedicated her entire A/W 14–15 collection to my work. I also painted a sofa that was exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014, and I worked with a wallpaper producer who wanted to use some of my paintings.
I think it’s right that an artist in today’s world is open to collaborations and isn’t afraid to bring their work into other worlds, especially in an era where there is already so much cross-contamination.
What are your greatest inspirations or influences?
I’m very tied to Italy, where I’m based and have my studio. I definitely get a lot of my inspiration from here. I think it’s a unique atmosphere that cannot be found anywhere else. I feel my work is profoundly Italian: the lines of the figures, the temperature of the colours, and the atmospheres that I want to recreate in the works. The faces of my women often have very proud expressions and at the same time they are melancholic, like this country.
I very much love the great Italian artists, both near and far in time, who have inspired me over the years and have become like companions on this journey.
Masters from the past like Piero della Francesca, Rosso Fiorentino, Antonello da Messina, Andrea Mantegna, Giotto, Paolo Uccello, Botticelli… the list is longer. Then those of the twentieth century, like Felice Casorati, Giorgio Morandi, Sironi, Giorgio de Chirico and Marino Marini, and more recently, in the seventies, Mario Schifano, Pino Pascali, Alighiero Boetti, Piero Dorazio and many more. Above all I love Bonnard, Balthus, Matisse, Picasso, David Hockney and Francis Bacon.
Tell us about your new exhibition.
The exhibition opens on Sunday 16 July and runs all summer, until 15 September, in the council of Fortunago, a very pretty ancient village near Pavia. It is curated by the painter Pino Jelo, who has been a great teacher for me over the years. The title is Suspended, a title that specifically refers to the works on display. For the exhibition I have selected ten large paintings.
The figures in my work seem to emerge from a dream world, suspended in time and space. The focus of my research is the female figure, which appear to hold each other up, help each other. The connecting thread is human contact and the weaving of bodies like silent and secret conversations.
Sospesa · Suspended
Palazzo Comunale, Fortunago (Pavia) · 16 July – 15 September 2017 · Curated by Pino Jelo · Ten large paintings
My work definitely starts with me, even if the subject is a flower or the female form. For me it has to be intimate and convey self-observation. It’s symbolic and doesn’t recall much reality. It’s not at all conceptual. It doesn’t start with an idea as such but comes from nowhere. It’s purely instinctive and emotional. For me art is primarily about a sacred sense of life.
“For me art is primarily about a sacred sense of life.”Sofia Cacciapaglia
What is the most interesting response to your work so far?
In a world where everything is “visible,” the “invisible” captures the feeling more than the eye. I’m happy to hear when people like my work and have felt something, in this time when contemporary art is and can be anything.
Which websites, publications or social media do you follow?
I’m not that much into technology. The social media I use most is Instagram. It is very important for people who work with images to promote their work.
What are your materials?
Apart from canvas, my favourite materials are simple ones such as cardboard and wrapping paper, because of their material structure and their neutral background colour, which gives the work a poetic vibration. In 2019 I completed Locus Amoenus, my first large 360° installation that covered the walls of my studio with discarded cardboard boxes, which I transformed into a blossoming garden from floor to ceiling. This work brings an environmental message: giving the salvaged material a second life through the representation of nature and the rebirth of spring.
What would be a dream project for you?
I would like to make a new series of work using ceramics. I think that white ceramics could be a perfect material for my subjects. And I’d like to have studios in different locations so that I could work from different places, such as M’hamid, a small town that is one of the gates to the Sahara Desert. Or on a volcanic island like Stromboli in Sicily. Or Mexico City, seeing as people often see a connection between my work and Mexico.
Anima
A room divider screen, Mario Milana with Sofia Cacciapaglia, 2025
The most recent turn in her long conversation with design. Milana, who co-founded the Milan studio Casa Milana with the Colombian creative Gabriella Campagna, built a standing screen in translucent fiberglass. Cacciapaglia’s woman is drawn into it in a single fine line, so she appears and disappears as light moves through the room.
It is a precise translation of her painting into an object. Her figures were always meant to be suspended, to sit somewhere between presence and dream. Set in a translucent panel, the figure is literally half-there. The title, the Italian for soul, is the right one: this is a figure you sense as much as see, which is exactly what she means by the “invisible” capturing feeling more than the eye.
- Title
- Anima room divider screen
- Year
- 2025
- Materials
- Fiberglass, brass
- Design
- Mario Milana (Casa Milana) with Sofia Cacciapaglia
- Shown
- Casa Milana: Two Rooms, LAMB, 32 St George Street, Mayfair, London · 14 October 2025 – 27 March 2026
What it means when a painter
says the work comes from nowhere
Sofia Cacciapaglia grew up in a family where art was already present. Her father is a classical composer, and the decision to paint came naturally and was always supported. She trained at the Brera, which is not simply a qualification but a lineage: a thread back to the way Italian painting has understood the female figure since Piero della Francesca placed women in pale stone landscapes and gave them expressions that were proud and melancholic at once.
When she says the work is not conceptual, that it does not start with an idea and comes from nowhere, she is describing something that takes a lifetime of looking. The work that appears to arrive spontaneously is the work made possible by the deepest absorption of a tradition. You have to know Botticelli before you can paint as if you do not. She has said elsewhere that she never makes sketches, because the first mark is always the freshest. That is only possible when the drawing already lives in the hand.
The cardboard matters for the same reason. For years she has painted on boxes left by the shops near her studio. On one level it is an ecological gesture, a second life for waste, and critics have rightly placed it in the line of arte povera. But it is also a return to the fresco: Roman painters turned the walls of houses into gardens, and her curators have drawn the comparison directly. The title of her 2024 New York show, Affresco su Cartone (fresco on cardboard), says it plainly. The humblest material carries the oldest ambition in Italian painting, which is to make a wall into a world.
What holds all of this together is the women. They are rarely alone. They lean, link arms, rest their heads on one another, and look out with that pride and melancholy she calls Italian. Across nearly twenty years of shows, from a village hall near Pavia to Tribeca, Geneva and Mayfair, that is the constant: a picture of women held up by one another, painted with enough lightness that it never becomes a slogan.
Timeline
- 1983
Born in Ponte dell’Olio, in the province of Piacenza. Spends every childhood summer at the family home on the coast of Sicily.
- 2006
Graduates in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan.
- 2007
Moves to New York. First solo show at Industria SuperStudio, curated by the photographer Fabrizio Ferri.
- 2011
Youngest artist invited to the Italian Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
- Before 2017
Exhibitions in Milan and Rome include the Riccardo Crespi Gallery, the Museo della Permanente, Palazzo delle Stelline and Pastificio Cerere, alongside charity auctions at Sotheby’s.
- 2013
Solo exhibition at Banca Sistema, Corso Monforte, Milan (3 October – 31 December).
- 2014
Caterina Gatta dedicates her Autumn/Winter 2014–15 collection to Cacciapaglia’s work, the first time her drawings are printed on fabric. She paints a sofa that is exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
- 2017
Solo exhibition at The Palm Tree Gallery, Notting Hill, London, opening 21 April.
- 2017
Sospesa (Suspended), ten large paintings at the Palazzo Comunale, Fortunago, curated by Pino Jelo. This interview is first published by Antakly Projects.
- 2019
Locus Amoenus: her first 360° installation, a floor-to-ceiling garden painted on discarded cardboard across the walls of her Milan studio, completed in May.
- 2020
Femmesenfleur, solo exhibition in Silvaplana, near St. Moritz.
- 2023
Incanto, her first New York gallery exhibition, at Sapar Contemporary, curated by Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer (13 April – 20 May).
- 2024
Affresco su Cartone at Sapar Contemporary, New York, with an essay by Lana S. Meador of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Le Rêve se Lève at MABE Gallery, Geneva. Nuovo at the Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania.
- 2025
Shows with Casa Milana during Milan Design Week. Anima, the room divider screen with Mario Milana, is exhibited at LAMB, London, from October.
- 2026
Apparizione at Sapar Contemporary, New York (30 April – 27 June), with an essay by Emma Saperstein. Forza Silenziosa at MABE Gallery, Geneva (7 May – 31 August).
The artists she loves
Italian masters
- Giotto
- Paolo Uccello
- Piero della Francesca
- Andrea Mantegna
- Antonello da Messina
- Botticelli
- Rosso Fiorentino
Italian, 20th century
- Felice Casorati
- Giorgio de Chirico
- Mario Sironi
- Giorgio Morandi
- Marino Marini
- Piero Dorazio
- Mario Schifano
- Pino Pascali
- Alighiero Boetti
Above all
- Pierre Bonnard
- Henri Matisse
- Pablo Picasso
- Balthus
- Francis Bacon
- David Hockney
Collaborations
Anima screen with Mario Milana
Fiberglass and brass room divider for Casa Milana, shown at LAMB, London. See above.
Caterina Gatta
A whole collection built from her paintings, the first time her drawings became prints on fabric. She believes an artist today should not be afraid to bring the work into other worlds, “especially in an era where there is already so much cross-contamination.”
Sofa, Venice Architecture Biennale
A sofa she painted herself, shown at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale: the female figure translated into furniture.
Wallpaper
A wallpaper producer adapted some of her paintings, putting her figures on the walls of a room rather than on a canvas hung on one: an early hint of Locus Amoenus.
Dream studios
White ceramics
The next series“A perfect material for my subjects.” Simple, pale and entirely itself.
M’hamid
Morocco · Gate to the SaharaOne of the last towns before the desert begins.
Stromboli
Sicily · Volcanic islandA working volcano in the Tyrrhenian Sea, close to the Sicily she calls part of her life.
Mexico City
Where people see the linkViewers often find affinities between her work and Mexico.
On Instagram
Frequently asked
Who is Sofia Cacciapaglia?
An Italian painter, born in Ponte dell’Olio in 1983 and trained at the Brera Academy in Milan. She paints monumental, weightless women and oversized flowers on canvas, cardboard and packing paper, and was the youngest artist in the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale.
Why does she paint on cardboard?
For its structure and neutral colour, which she says give each brushstroke a “poetic vibration,” and for its second life: the boxes are left by shops near her studio. Curators connect the practice to arte povera and to Roman fresco painting.
What is Locus Amoenus?
Latin for “pleasant place.” Her first 360° installation, completed in May 2019, in which she covered her studio walls floor to ceiling with discarded boxes painted as a garden.
What is the Anima screen?
A 2025 room divider in fiberglass and brass by the designer Mario Milana of Casa Milana, made in collaboration with Cacciapaglia and exhibited at LAMB, London, from October 2025 to March 2026.
Where can I see her work?
Recent solo exhibitions have been at Sapar Contemporary in New York and MABE Gallery in Geneva. Current work is on sofiacacciapaglia.com and Instagram.
Sources & further reading
- Sofia Cacciapaglia, Exhibitions, sofiacacciapaglia.com.
- Sapar Contemporary, Artist page: Sofia Cacciapaglia, New York.
- Sapar Contemporary, Incanto (2023), with a conversation with Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer.
- Lana S. Meador, essay for Affresco su Cartone, Sapar Contemporary (2024).
- Emma Saperstein, essay for Apparizione, Sapar Contemporary (2026).
- MABE Gallery, Sofia Cacciapaglia, Geneva.
- LAMB, Casa Milana: Two Rooms, London (2025–26).
- La Voce di New York, “Affresco su cartone”: Sofia Cacciapaglia, da Piacenza a Tribeca (16 July 2024).
- The Muhlenberg Weekly, Sofia Cacciapaglia’s Nuovo (2024).
- Arte.it, Sofia Cacciapaglia at Banca Sistema, Milan (2013).
Antakly, Leila. “Sofia Cacciapaglia: Painting the Suspended Woman.” Antakly Projects, 15 July 2017, updated 6 November 2026. https://www.ninunina.com/interviews/2017/7/15/sofiacacciapaglia
Quotations from Sofia Cacciapaglia in the interview section come from her 2017 conversation with Antakly Projects.
More women artists from the archive
Curious about their work, not the moment.
Leila Antakly founded Antakly Projects in New York in 2003, as Ninu Nina. For more than twenty years it has published conversations with artists, musicians, photographers, designers and thinkers across art, music, fashion, film and contemporary culture.
Interviews are chosen through curiosity and research, not celebrity, trend or algorithm, with particular attention to artists who deserve a deeper conversation than the usual press cycle allows. The archive asks how people think, what shapes their work and where their ideas sit in a wider cultural conversation, not simply what they are promoting.
