Giovanni Greco (b. 1953, Catania) [Italy] Acrylic enamel on canvas Artist's signature on front and back; Certificate of authenticity from the artist GOVANNI GRECO was born in Catania, the city where he lives and works. After unfinished biology studies and further studies in art, he enrolled at the Scuola del Nudi in Catania and in 1980 began his painting career, drawing on the influence of Magritte and later De Chirico, where it was possible to resolve two seemingly contradictory layers—dream and objective reality—into a sort of absolute reality. At the heart of his research is a strong drive to resolve the great dilemmas of existence and the relationship between oneself and the world, seeking to interpret the sometimes ineffable "thought" as a means of shedding new light on the fundamental problems our minds constantly struggle to free themselves from, enacting visual blackmail, the blackmail of the soul. Later, he was drawn to metaphysical painting, and primarily to the works of G. De Chirico, not so much for his stylistic choices as for his profound interest, expressed in compositional solidity; objects, figures, and space itself become powerful masses created by dark, mellow chromatic volumes in a context where time seems to stand still and the subjects are suspended between metaphysical influence and neoclassical references drawn from works of the past, shaken by time, in an unknown world. It is the world of “èndonèxò”, a term coined by the artist – (éndon-éxò) where the gaze is clearly directed towards itself and within things but at the same time makes his desire to make his painting feel closer to the observer’s experience, making it rise from the depths of the soul and gradually replace, with new dark forces, the clear and simple spaces of reason.