Her hair smelled sweet, 2022
I was trained as a realist painter in Rome, immersed in the discipline of technique and tradition, but I was always more drawn to the fictions that form around images than to reproducing what is in front of me...I build my paintings like stages—ornate and fragile—where beauty teeters on the edge of the uncanny. I’m less interested in fixing an image than in watching it transform, collapse, and reassemble into something alive.
Beatrice Scaccia
Bea Scaccia was born in Veroli, Italy, in 1978, and received her MFA in Fine Art from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where she studied with Gino Marotta. In 2011, she relocated to New York City, where she currently lives and works. Trained as a realist painter yet resisting mere representation, Scaccia constructs intricate, uncanny scenes that explore the interplay of splendor and unease. Her paintings compress layers of artifice—wigs, fabrics, jewels—into dense surfaces that parody ideals of feminine beauty while revealing their inherent instability and potential for transformation.
Scaccia’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Wrap Yourself In This Skin at Maruani Mercier during Art Brussels (2024), With Their Striking Features at JDJ Tribeca, New York (2022), and My Hope Chest at the Katonah Museum of Art, New York (2021). Earlier solo projects include Little Gloating Eve at Cuchifritos Gallery, New York (2014), The Perfect Stage at Bosi Contemporary, New York (2013), and He, She, It at Galleria Ugo Ferranti, Rome (2010). She will have forthcoming solo presentations at Maruani Mercier, Brussels, and a two-person exhibition with Gino Marotta at Richard Saltoun, Rome, both in 2025.
Her work has also appeared in acclaimed group shows such as Fabrizio Clerici at Galleria Nazionale, Rome (2022), Homemade at Magazzino Italian Art, New York (2020), The Long Minute at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg (2020), Death of Beauty at Sargent’s Daughters West, Los Angeles (2023), What Now? at PM/AM Gallery, London (2023), and Holiday at Harper’s, New York (2024).
Scaccia’s paintings and drawings are part of major public and private collections, including the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and the Portland Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in Artnet News, Whitehot Magazine, Flash Art, Domus, Exibart, and Artribune, among others, affirming her position as a distinctive voice in contemporary painting.