Marco Scola

Marco Scola is the artist behind Matribal. He comes from Catania in Sicily. He studied architecture first, then moved to Rome and took a BA in Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts.

He works free of received technique and doctrine, in a language he built himself: watercolour and spray paint, canvas and linen, fabrics, compressed cardboard, and material picked up off the street. That appetite for experiment runs into clothing and jewellery too — restyled, hand-painted, one of a kind.

To him, art is a means for himself and others to acknowledge and overcome pain while embracing daily reality through emotional work.

His work centres on the human face and figure: primitive and tribal art mixed with avant-garde and abstract, remixed from painting to painting. The colour is loud and the message is not decorative.

He has been part of Berlin’s underground art scene since 2007. He lives and works at Atelier Attico, the last occupied flat in an emptied-out old building in Kreuzberg — and that building is part of what the paintings are about.

Born

Catania, Sicily, Italy

Studied

BA Visual Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, Rome

Lives and works

Atelier Attico, Kreuzberg, Berlin

In Berlin since

2007

Media

Acrylic, spray paint, oil, oil stick, silkscreen — on canvas, linen, board, wood, faux leather and paper

Works here

70 works, 2004–2021