Nicola De Maria

Nicola De Maria was born on 6 December 1954 in Foglianise, Italy. He initially trained in medicine, earning a degree and continuing into a specialization in psychiatry and neurology, though the specific institution and years of this training are not documented in available sources. He never practiced medicine, and his artistic training is consistently described as self-taught. He turned fully to art around 1977, a shift sources tie to his first wall painting in Milan.

His international profile developed quickly through the early 1980s. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1980, documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, and the Venice Biennale again in 1988 and 1990. Sources also cite biennial appearances in Sao Paulo, Sydney, and Rome without giving precise years or edition numbers for each. A run of institutional retrospectives followed, including Kunsthalle Basel, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Kunsthaus Zurich, and the Seibu Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. A further retrospective, "The Madness to Come," curated by Danilo Eccher, opened at GAM, the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, in Turin in 2013. Most current sources describe him as living and working in Turin; Artnet is alone in citing the Sannio region of Italy as his current base. He is alive as of 2026, with no obituary, gallery statement, or press report indicating otherwise.

De Maria is consistently discussed as one of the five core Transavanguardia painters, a movement critic Achille Bonito Oliva named and championed as Italy's answer to the return to figuration and expressive gesture in painting during the late 1970s and 1980s. Museum framing, including from the Castello di Rivoli, emphasizes a poetic, lyrical abstract language, with color and titling, works are often named for stars, angels, flowers, or spirits, treated as central to the work's meaning rather than decorative. His repeated inclusion in the Venice Biennale (1980, 1988, 1990) and documenta 7 is cited as evidence of institutional stature reaching well beyond the gallery system. No exact, independently attributable critic quotation from a major outlet could be confirmed in current research; institutional and gallery texts describe his significance in summary rather than in quotable form.

De Maria's auction market is modest relative to his institutional standing. A secondary Italian market-analysis source (pontiart.com) reports his highest documented auction price as approximately USD 305,000 for "Stelle con angeli + luce + spirito bianco," dated to 2006; that source does not specify the auction house, city, or exact sale date, and no higher price has been confirmed through mid-2026. A separately, more precisely documented 2006 sale, "Giorni del secolo nuovo" at Sotheby's London on 16 October 2006, brought EUR 123,480, though that source does not describe it as a record. Away from these 2006 results, his results have been smaller: a Phillips day sale, exact date unspecified in the source, brought USD 60,960 for "Regno dei Fiori," and a 2026 Italian market listing (ValutaOpere) records EUR 34,000 for "Testa soave di un angelo," dated 10 June 2026. The overall picture is a market with limited liquidity and imprecise sourcing at the top end, so any single reported figure for this artist should be treated with caution.

De Maria's museum presence, spanning the Venice Biennale, documenta, and an institutional relationship with the Castello di Rivoli, is considerably stronger than the depth of his auction record, which rests on a small number of results and a single, imprecisely sourced high figure. No catalogue raisonne has been identified, so provenance and, where available, artist-signed certificates of authenticity carry extra weight in verification. Given the gap between the reported high price and more typical, better-documented results, collectors should treat any single auction figure for this artist with caution and confirm current gallery representation directly before transacting.