{"title":"Demetrio Di Grado","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBorn in Palermo\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eLives and works in Catania, Sicily\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDemetrio Di Grado is a Sicilian artist known for his analogical collages, created exclusively from original cut-out images sourced from 1930s and 1940s magazines.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough visual and symbolic associations, he transforms these fragments of the past into poetic compositions that weave memory, irony, and contemporary critique.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"unequivocal-being","title":"Unequivocal Being","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this work, the collage assembles fragments of memory, architecture, and the human figure into a fragile, suspended form. Torn paper, archival imagery, and handwritten text converge.  Faces partially emerge and recede, their gazes interrupted by layers that conceal.\u003cbr\u003e\nLanguage appears as a fragile overlay, suggesting the difficulty of asserting a fixed identity or truth. The central architectural element evokes the tension between interior and exterior states.  Rather than resolving its fractures, the composition holds them in balance. Vulnerability here is not collapse, but endurance.                                                                                                              Demetrio Di Grado is an Italian contemporary artist whose practice evolved from hip-hop and street culture into a refined language of analogue collage. Since 2016, he works with images sourced from 1930s–1950s magazines, reconstructing the past through poetic, emotionally charged compositions centered on the human figure. With over twenty years of practice and exhibitions, Di Grado is regarded as a leading figure in Sicilian contemporary art.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871110988,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/157_a.jpg?v=1770191939"},{"product_id":"severe","title":"Severe","description":"\u003cp\u003eComposed from vintage Italian magazines, Severe centers on the figure of a child set against imposing architectural forms. The child’s body, interrupted by cuts and overlays, becomes a site of tension where innocence collides with systems of authority and social order. A small textual fragment placed across the eyes functions as both censorship and command.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe collage is constructed through cutting, tearing, layering, and reassembling paper. Visible seams and ruptures remain intact, allowing the image to hold its own fragility. Buildings, symbolic objects, and figures intersect without hierarchy, evoking the rigid frameworks within which identity is shaped from an early age. The historical source material retains its weight, carrying the visual codes of mid-twentieth-century Italy, an era marked by reconstruction and conformity.\u003cbr\u003e\nRather than depicting severity as strength, the work exposes it as a brittle structure. Authority appears sustained through repetition and restraint, yet vulnerable once disrupted.\u003cbr\u003e\nDemetrio Di Grado is an Italian contemporary artist whose practice evolved from hip-hop and street culture into a distinctive language of analogue collage. Since 2016, he has worked with imagery sourced from 1930s–1950s magazines, creating emotionally charged compositions centered on the human figure. With over twenty years of practice and international exhibitions, Di Grado is regarded as a leading figure in Sicilian contemporary art.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871176524,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/158_a.jpg?v=1770191976"},{"product_id":"disorder","title":"Disorder","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Disorder, Demetrio Di Grado brings together fragments from vintage Italian magazines to construct a scene that oscillates between innocence and instability. A child figure, poised atop a toy horse, holds a book close to the body, an image that evokes learning, discipline, and early social formation. Yet the composition resists coherence. Layers slip, overlap, and interrupt one another, dissolving any sense of fixed order.\u003cbr\u003e\nCreated through a fully analogue collage process, the work preserves the physical traces of cutting, tearing, and reassembly. Paper edges remain visible, and the original printed textures carry the cultural weight of their time. Floral motifs, graphic patterns, and symbolic objects coexist without hierarchy, forming a structure that feels provisional and unsettled.\u003cbr\u003e\nRather than illustrating disorder as chaos, Di Grado treats it as a condition embedded within systems of education, identity, and growth. The child’s figure appears suspended between control and play, instruction and imagination. Meaning emerges through tension rather than resolution, as fragility and structure coexist in a delicate balance.\u003cbr\u003e\nBy reactivating archival imagery within a contemporary framework, Disorders reflects on how inherited models of behavior and knowledge persist, fracture, and reconfigure themselves over time. The past is not presented as stable memory, but as a material constantly reshaped by the present.                                  Demetrio Di Grado is an Italian contemporary artist whose practice evolved from hip-hop and street culture into a refined language of analogue collage. Since 2016, he works with images sourced from 1930s–1950s magazines, reconstructing the past through poetic, emotionally charged compositions centered on the human figure. With over twenty years of practice and exhibitions, Di Grado is regarded as a leading figure in Sicilian contemporary art.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871209292,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/159_a.jpg?v=1770192012"},{"product_id":"prejudice","title":"Prejudice","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Prejudice, two figures lean toward one another in a gesture that suggests tenderness and connection, yet their faces are partially obscured by the piece's title.\u003cbr\u003e\nConstructed through an analogue collage process, the work preserves visible cuts, tears, and overlaps. Layers of printed matter accumulate around the figures, creating a dense field of interruption. The original imagery carries social codes of its time, embedded within gestures and postures that remain legible today.\u003cbr\u003e\nRather than presenting prejudice as an external force, the work situates it within moments of intimacy and familiarity. The fragmentation of the image exposes how inherited beliefs and cultural assumptions can intrude even in spaces of closeness. By reactivating archival material through contemporary assemblage, Di Grado transforms the past into a living archive.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871242060,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/160_a.jpg?v=1770192049"},{"product_id":"persistent","title":"Persistent","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Persistent, Demetrio Di Grado layers fragments from vintage Italian magazines into a compact yet charged composition, where images, symbols, and textures accumulate through repetition and pressure. Faces partially surface and withdraw, intersected by graphic elements and color fields. The title is embedded within the image, functioning less as a caption than as a structural presence.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe work is created through an analogue collage process. Paper is cut, torn, overlapped, and repositioned by hand, allowing the material to retain its physical memory. Traces of typography, handwriting, and printed patterns coexist with figurative elements.\u003cbr\u003e\nPersistence here is not portrayed as certainty or strength, but as a condition shaped by accumulation. Meaning builds gradually through layers that refuse erasure. The image holds together despite fracture, sustained by tension, recurrence. What endures is not a single form, but a state of continual negotiation.  By reactivating archival imagery within a contemporary assemblage, Di Grado positions the past as an active force rather than a closed record.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871307596,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/161_a.jpg?v=1770192160"},{"product_id":"self-inquiry","title":"Self-Inquiry","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Self-Inquiry, Demetrio Di Grado draws from vintage Italian magazines to construct a portrait shaped by uncertainty and reflection. A female figure emerges at the center of the composition, her gaze partially obscured by the title itself, transforming language into a visual interruption. The question mark that accompanies her becomes both symbol and structure, reinforcing a state of hesitation rather than conclusion.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe collage is built through a fully analogue process, where paper is cut, torn, layered, and repositioned by hand. Architectural fragments, graphic symbols, and fields of color intersect with the figure, creating a space that feels simultaneously interior and external. Each element retains traces of its original context, allowing the past to remain visible within the present configuration.\u003cbr\u003e\nRather than offering introspection as clarity, the work presents it as a suspended condition. Meaning unfolds through fragmentation and pause, where identity is not fixed but continually negotiated. The act of questioning becomes a form of presence, attentive and unresolved.\u003cbr\u003e\nBy reactivating archival imagery through contemporary assemblage, Di Grado positions the past as a living material. Self-Inquiry reflects on how subjectivity is formed through layers of memory, cultural expectation, and personal doubt, revealing vulnerability as an essential part of awareness.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871340364,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/162_a.jpg?v=1770192199"},{"product_id":"maintain","title":"Maintain","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Maintain, Demetrio Di Grado assembles figures and architectural fragments from vintage Italian magazines into a tightly compressed vertical composition. At the center, a child’s face is partially obscured by the word Mantenere (“to maintain”), which cuts across the eyes like an instruction or command. Below, two adult figures lean inward in an intimate gesture of embrace, their bodies forming a protective enclosure that contrasts with the rigid structures layered above.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe work is constructed entirely through an analogue collage process. Paper is cut, torn, and reassembled by hand, with seams and interruptions left visible. Ornamental architecture and domestic forms intersect with human bodies, suggesting the weight of social, familial, and institutional systems pressing down upon acts of care. The child figure becomes the point where these forces converge—both held and constrained.\u003cbr\u003e\nRather than presenting maintenance as stability or reassurance, the work frames it as an act of endurance. Care appears sustained through repetition, effort, and quiet obligation. By reactivating archival imagery, Maintain reflects on how responsibility, protection, and emotional labor are inherited and performed, often without visibility, across generations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871373132,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/163_a.jpg?v=1770192333"},{"product_id":"opportunity","title":"Opportunity","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Opportunity, a child figure appears, partially obscured by the word itself, suggesting anticipation and limitation. Below, overlapping figures and graphic elements accumulate, creating a dense field of social presence.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe work is constructed through a fully analogue collage process. Paper is cut, torn, and reassembled by hand, allowing visible seams and interruptions to remain integral to the image. The archival material carries cultural narratives embedded in mid twentieth century imagery, which are reactivated here without nostalgia.\u003cbr\u003e\nRather than presenting opportunity as promise or reward, Di Grado frames it as a fragile and uneven condition. The composition suggests how possibility is shaped by collective structures, inherited systems, and chance, often distributed unequally.\u003cbr\u003e\nBy transforming historical printed matter into contemporary assemblage, Di Grado positions the past as an active force within the present.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871471436,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/164_a.jpg?v=1770192368"},{"product_id":"fragile-encounters","title":"Fragile Encounters","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Fragile Encounters, multiple faces and profiles are cut, layered, and compressed into a single, precarious structure. Figures overlap and interrupt one another, their gazes partially obscured by fragments of text and paper.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe work is constructed through an analogue collage process. Vintage Italian magazine images, graphic patterns, and textured surfaces are assembled into a vertical composition. A prominent timepiece anchors the work, introducing a sense of duration, suspended time. Subtle color accents punctuate the largely monochrome palette.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe title of the piece enters the image as obstruction rather than explanation, reinforcing the fragility of exchange. Rather than presenting confrontation as conflict, the work frames it as a condition of exposure: an unstable meeting shaped by closeness, fragmentation, and vulnerability.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871536972,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/165_a.jpg?v=1770192406"},{"product_id":"nonetheless","title":"Nonetheless","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Nonetheless, a child figure occupies the center of the composition, absorbed in a quiet, deliberate gesture as surrounding fragments press inward from all sides. The figure remains grounded within a dense field of graphic forms, letters, and cut imagery that compress the space.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe work is realized through an analogue collage process. Paper is cut, torn, layered, and reassembled, leaving visible seams and edges that register the physical act of construction. Archival imagery and bold graphic elements coexist, holding tension while maintaining balance.  Meaning emerges gradually, through accumulation and resistance, while vulnerability is a condition of survival.\u003cbr\u003e\nBy reactivating historical printed material within a contemporary assemblage, Di Grado positions the past as an active force within the present. Nonetheless reflects on how individuals move within inherited structures, revealing resilience as something practiced quietly, moment by moment.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871602508,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/166_a.jpg?v=1770192446"},{"product_id":"awareness","title":"Awareness","description":"\u003cp\u003eA smiling female figure emerges at the center of the composition, her expression masked by the word 'awareness'. Di Grado frames awareness as a condition shaped by contradiction. The image holds together moments of openness and concealment, joy and tension, revealing consciousness as something formed through accumulation and fracture. What is visible is inseparable from what is obscured.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe collage is realized through a fully analogue process where paper is cut, torn, overlapped, and reassembled. Surrounding fragments of typography, color, and pattern accumulate around the figure, creating a visual field that feels active and unstable rather than resolved.\u003cbr\u003e\nBy reactivating archival imagery within a contemporary assemblage, Di Grado transforms the past into a living material. Awareness reflects on how understanding emerges not through simplification, but through the patient negotiation of complexity, where vulnerability becomes a necessary space for perception to take shape.               Demetrio Di Grado is a Sicilian artist whose analogue collage practice draws from vintage Italian magazines to explore themes of fragility, memory, and resilience. Working  by hand, he transforms archival print into relevant contemporary compositions.\u003cbr\u003e\nNomad Art Collective presents Vulnerable as an exclusive online exhibition on Artsy, bringing this body of work to an international audience. The digital format extends the intimacy of Di Grado’s practice beyond physical space.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612871635276,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/167_a.jpg?v=1770192487"},{"product_id":"indipendenza","title":"Indipendenza","description":"\u003cp\u003eA figure emerges from a dense accumulation of torn and layered paper fragments, a face, composed and direct, looking outward from the collision of images. The word indipendenza appears across the figure's chest like a caption or a declaration, the only legible text placed with intention amid the controlled chaos of the composition. Fragments of mid-century imagery, advertising type, color fields, and textural scraps press in from all sides, yet the figure holds its ground, one eye clear and steady above the fracture lines.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn Indipendenza, Demetrio Di Grado works in his characteristic mode: sourcing fragments from magazines and printed matter of the 1920s through 1950s and reassembling them into compressed, vertical compositions that feel simultaneously archaeological and urgent. Where his works often conceal the eyes of their figures, here one eye remains exposed, meeting the viewer with quiet defiance. Independence is something asserted from within the material itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDemetrio Di Grado is a Caltagirone-based artist whose collage practice, developed since 2016, draws on the visual language of the mid-twentieth century to interrogate identity, memory, and the layered nature of the image. His work is held in private collections and is represented by Nomad Art Collective, Sambuca di Sicilia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIndipendenza is presented as part of IL BIVIO III: Mosaica, Coexistence without Resolution, on view at Nomad Art Collective, Sambuca di Sicilia (AG), May 9 through July 4, 2026. This work is available for purchase and will ship upon the closing of the exhibition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57428916502860,"sku":null,"price":1100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/Indipendenza.jpg?v=1777907629"},{"product_id":"incompiuto","title":"Incompiuto","description":"\u003cp\u003eA child stands at the center of the composition, full-length and formally posed in the manner of early twentieth-century portrait photography. The eyes are covered by a strip of text reading incompiuto (unfinished, incomplete), Di Grado's characteristic gesture of occlusion, here applied not to an adult figure but to a child. The effect amplifies the sense of a life interrupted, a story not yet told. In one hand the figure holds an ornate key, its presence at once literal and symbolic: something to be opened, or something already lost.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAround the figure, torn fragments of printed matter, gold geometric shapes, textured surfaces, and shards of color press inward from a deep teal ground. The jagged, irregular edges of the support — drywall, worked and torn — become part of the composition itself, refusing the clean containment of a conventional frame. The result is a work that feels excavated as much as constructed, as if the image has been uncovered rather than assembled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIncompiuto is among Di Grado's most formally ambitious works, combining the intimate archival sensibility of his collage practice with a scale and physicality that commands the wall. The title resonates outward — toward childhood, toward history, toward the unresolved conditions that shape identity in Sicily and beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDemetrio Di Grado is a Caltagirone-based artist whose collage practice, developed since 2016, draws on the visual language of the mid-twentieth century to interrogate identity, memory, and the layered nature of the image. His work is held in private collections and is represented by Nomad Art Collective, Sambuca di Sicilia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIncompiuto is presented as part of IL BIVIO III: Mosaica, Coexistence without Resolution, on view at Nomad Art Collective, Sambuca di Sicilia (AG), May 9 through July 4, 2026. This work is available for purchase.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Demetrio Digrado","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57428916535628,"sku":null,"price":1500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/Incompiuto.jpg?v=1777907663"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/collections\/Simone_Geraci_portrait_93f3a578-5dfc-4524-8875-68239d599e3e.webp?v=1773728648","url":"https:\/\/thenomadartcollective.com\/collections\/demetrio-di-grado.oembed?page=2","provider":"Nomad Art Collective","version":"1.0","type":"link"}