Sofia Silva: Painting as Radical Process

Sofia Silva (b. 1990, Padua) is an Italian painter, writer, and mentor at Turps Banana. She studied at IUAV and Ca' Foscari in Venice. Her recent exhibitions include Les Pratiques Solitaires at THE VIEW (Genoa, 2018), Chesky's Manor at Taylor Macklin (Zurich, 2018), and Night Plinths in London (2018). In 2019, she participated in group shows The Dream Follows The Mouth (Arcade, London) and Adrian, George, Peter, Sofia, Tamina (P420, Bologna). Silva describes her approach as 'militant painting,' rejecting mere figuration as illustration. She builds a vocabulary of forms—like fingers as tragic Pierrot figures—recurring across works. Her studio in a 14th-century palazzo in Padua is shared with scorpions and pigeons. She recently began cutting large canvases (3x4 meters) into fragments, collaging the most telling pieces onto new supports, aiming to 'break the simulacrum.' She cites Philip Guston, Giambattista Tiepolo, and Vladimir Nabokov as influences. Silva criticizes the international reception of Italian painting as 'a disaster' and advocates for a connoisseurship of painting, naming Raoul De Keyser, Forrest Bess, and Rose Wylie among overlooked masters. She teaches at Turps School in London and writes for IL Magazine, Archivio, and Il Tascabile.