Louise Giovanelli Biography

Louise Giovanelli (b. 1993, London) is a leading voice in contemporary British painting, recognised for her meticulously constructed compositions that interrogate the mechanics of looking, illusion and surface. She studied Fine Art at Manchester School of Art before completing postgraduate studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Amy Sillman. Giovanelli lives and works in Manchester, UK.

Her paintings and works on paper are characterised by tightly cropped motifs drawn from art history, theatre, devotional imagery and cinematic sources. Giovanelli isolates fragments such as draped fabrics, cascades of hair, marble limbs or luminous skin, magnifying them until they hover between figuration and abstraction. Through layered glazing techniques and highly controlled brushwork, she produces surfaces that appear hyperreal yet remain consciously artificial, heightening the tension between image and material. Light plays a central role in her practice: highlights shimmer across satin, skin or sculptural forms, creating an atmosphere that feels both intimate and staged.

Giovanelli’s work frequently engages with the legacy of Baroque painting, religious iconography and classical sculpture, while simultaneously referencing contemporary photography and digital image culture. By compressing depth and bringing forms close to the picture plane, she intensifies the viewer’s awareness of desire, spectacle and ambiguity. The result is a body of work that feels at once historical and strikingly current.

Notable exhibitions

Giovanelli has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at institutions including the Hepworth Wakefield, White Cube London and Hong Kong, He Art Museum in Foshan, China, and Museum Villa Stuck in Munich. Her work has featured in prominent group exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London, the Courtauld Gallery, London, and the Nasjonal Museet in Oslo, among others.

Her prints and paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Tate, MOCA Los Angeles, ICA Miami, and Manchester Art Gallery, and have been widely reviewed in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Frieze.