Giovanni Guida Turns Grattage Into a Language of Light and Matter

The Italian artist marks a century of Max Ernst’s pioneering techniques by exploring the possibilities of grattage through layers of paint, color, matter, and the spiritual.

All it took for Italian artist Giovanni Guida to ignite his passion for visual art was his late father handing him a wooden-handled iron brush, which he now keeps in his studio as a sacred relic. And in all honesty, it still left him questioning: “How could an elegant work of art ever emerge from such a crude tool?” Little did he know it would mark the beginning of his mastery of the grattage painting, leading him to develop original techniques to the method by using wire brushes, metal blocks, and even scalpels to scrape fresh paint directly from the canvas.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the grattage painting technique, invented by the German Surrealist artist Max Ernst in Paris, France. In 1925, Ernst developed frottage, the technique of rubbing graphite on paper placed over textured surfaces. A year later, he sought a way to translate this automatist technique into heavy oil paint on canvas by relying on layering and excavation. Beginning with an oil base, subsequent layers of color, generally darker, are superimposed to build dramatic tension. While the paint remains fresh, the surface is incised with pointed tools, and the carving breaks through the superficial film to resurrect the underlying hues, creating a striking chiaroscuro.

For Guida, the technique’s centennial anniversary is a living language in continuous evolution, representing responsibility and a leap toward the future of art.

“A century ago, the Surrealists employed this technique as a form of psychic automatism to bring forth the subconscious and the randomness of matter; my research sought to evolve that impulse into a true chromatic kenosis, a ‘cleansing’ or emptying of excess to reveal the essential,” he says.

“It is a visceral and instinctive encounter with matter: by scraping, scoring, and carving through layers of pigment, lapis lazuli blues, cosmic azures, and flashes of gold and silver, the act of piercing and penetrating the surfaces ceases to be mere subtraction. Instead, it becomes the revelation of spiritual luminosity that was already there, waiting beneath the skin of the artwork.”

His development of the technique has led students and artists worldwide to study and reproduce his work. Guida says that he has received a fair share of photographs from children holding their works, including those from France, Spain, Mexico, and India. But when he looks at Filipino artists, he sees the symbol of a nation with a layered history.

“More than anyone, the Filipino sensibility spontaneously grasps the core of my work: the understanding that every layer of color, much like every layer of history, is not meant to be concealed, but penetrated and brought into the light.”

Guida has exhibited globally, including at the Manila Cathedral, made possible through the support of the Archbishop of Manila at the time, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle. Looking back, he considers it a spiritual and cultural bridge between the Philippines and the Vatican.

“What brought me the greatest joy was uncovering an almost predestined symbolic resonance between my palette and the sacredness of the cathedral, which is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception,” he says. “Seeing the artwork vibrate inside the Manila Cathedral was far more than an exhibition; it was a chromatic epiphany. The convergence of cerulean and gold projected the painted medium beyond the human realm, suspending it between Apotheosis and Glory, where dimensions fade and time itself stands still.”

In an era of transparent imagery, Guida hopes that the future of grattage lies in its power of resistance and in young artists discovering the value of the irreversible act. “In the digital realm, everything can be undone or restored with a mechanical click; grattage, by contrast, demands the responsibility of the pure cut, where every score is permanent and unrepeatable.”

To score the canvas is to embrace the risk of the impact, Guida says. “To discover that an artwork does not exist merely to display something, but to bring forth a sacred conversation between man, matter, and the invisible.”