David Scanavino - Italian Painting

Klaus Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by David Scanavino, featuring a series of encaustic paintings on cowhide mounted to linen. In this new body of work, Scanavino draws inspiration from time on a teaching residency in Florence in the fall of 2025 and his observations of the bichromatic marble cladding of Italian Romanesque buildings. Here, Scanavino employs a strategy based on these alternating colors, laying paint over a rigorous grid system to develop a distinctive language of pattern and geometric motifs. Arrangements of stripes and squares extend his exploration of iconography and simplified form. These works build upon the artist's earlier sculptural installations, in which he used linoleum tiles to create architectural interventions that quoted and distorted relationships to institutional space. The cowhide grounds provide a subtly textured foundation, featuring incised grids that act as drawn lines for the melted encaustic beeswax paint to flow into and across, creating a delicate lattice that structures the compositions. Because the colors remain somewhat translucent, they emphasize the artist's mark-making while capturing the natural folds and wrinkles of the tanned surface. The works meld together an Italianate minimalism with the visceral, organic materiality of cowhide and wax, achieving an archetypal and timeless presence.