Who are the Miaz Brothers?
Born in Milan, the Miaz Brothers, Roberto in 1965 and Renato in 1968, have spent the last twenty-five years refining their skills and, more importantly, their philosophy. For the two brothers, their childlike enjoyment of playing and creating adventure naturally evolved into an artistic and creative process. In the early 1980s, they attended a school with an art focus, and later they studied together at a private design college in Milan. But they never wanted to follow the classic school-academy-gallery path.
Immediately after their studies, the brothers started with art installations for bars and discos in Italy. In 1996, the Miaz Brothers presented "Piercing" and "Timecode", two art installations on the subject of genetics and visual perception, for the first time in galleries in Milan. With digitalisation, the brothers' focus initially changed and until 2000 they primarily developed creative projects for large companies and brands such as Adidas, Swatch, Piaggio and Nike.
At the beginning of the new millennium, the Miaz Brothers first moved to New York, where they rediscovered photography for themselves and with it a new experimental technique. In the summer of 2001, Roberto and Renato went to Paris, where they lived for a total of five years. During this time, they worked with fashion brands such as Diesel, Puma and Kenzo. This enabled them to create economic independence so that they could finally devote themselves entirely to painting, which has been their main field of activity since childhood.
After stations in South America, Southeast Asia, Amsterdam and Valencia, the artists moved to London. In the British capital, they quickly made contact with the local art scene and learned, among other things, about JR, Antony Micallef and Connor Harrington who are also represented with works in the MUCA anniversary exhibition. The Miaz Brothers sold two exhibitions entirely to the collection of Damien Hirst, who is personally a great fan of the works of the two brothers.
How do the Miaz Brothers work?
The Miaz Brothers' philosophy is based on the principle of the "Renaissance Man", i.e. the idea that through experience, travel and experimentation in different artistic fields, one creates a body of work that resonates with the audience. In this process, they chose portraiture as the most appropriate genre to convey these ideas. They drew inspiration from little-known artists of the early and late Renaissance and created paintings using an airbrush.
The source material is at once familiar and alien, evoking a sense of the uncanny. The viewer's visual memory and interpretation is just as important as the painting itself. This visual cat-and-mouse game is unmistakable in the two works exhibited at MUCA and takes us into the Miaz Brothers' world of thought, but also into the memory of our distant past.
MIaz Brothers in the "25 Years" exhibition at MUCA Munich
At the MUCA, the two works "The Prince" and "The Innocent" were on show in the anniversary show (06.10.2022 - 10.09.2023).
The pose and costume of the figures in the Miaz Brothers' paintings, like those of the "Prince" on display, suggest that they occupy the same historical space as the people in the official portraits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the finely gradient layers of the Miaz Brothers' spray paint, however, the past appears at a distance through the mist of time - perceptible in a seductive way and yet unreachable.
