Raf Grassetti

Raf Grassetti, born Rafael Grassetti in Brazil in 1988, describes himself as largely self-taught. In interviews he has said he began an art school program in Brazil while already working but did not finish it, and that his real education came from short courses in early 3D and Flash animation, tutorials, and several years of on-the-job work at a Brazilian advertising production house that he started around age sixteen or seventeen.

From roughly 2009 to 2011 he worked as a digital sculptor at Hasbro, and over the following decade he sculpted licensed toys and collectible statues for clients including Sideshow Collectibles and McFarlane Toys, on properties such as Star Wars, Marvel, Transformers, and G.I. Joe. He joined Sony Santa Monica Studio around 2013 and was later named Studio Art Director, working as art director and principal artist on God of War (2018) and God of War Ragnarok (2022). He left Sony Santa Monica after roughly a decade with the studio, then joined Netflix Games as an art director on its "Team Blue" AAA studio. After Netflix closed that studio, he joined Naughty Dog as Art Director, where he is currently working on the unannounced new IP Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. He lives in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Alongside his game career, Grassetti built a parallel presence in NFT and crypto art starting in 2021, placing work in curated sales at both Christie's and Sotheby's and collaborating on licensed digital-collectible projects such as The Muhammad Ali Collection.

No exact, reproducible quotes from named critics writing in major art-press outlets could be located for Grassetti. His public profile is concentrated instead in video game industry press and NFT or crypto art trade coverage, which consistently frame him as a leading digital sculptor and as the art director behind the God of War franchise's visual identity through its 2018 and 2022 installments. Gallery and profile sources credit him with multiple industry recognitions for art direction and digital sculpture tied to those titles, though these appear to be studio and franchise-level game awards rather than individually juried fine-art prizes, and exact ceremony years are not documented in available sources.

Grassetti's market is built almost entirely on NFT and digital-collectible sales rather than physical-object auctions. His best-documented result is Lady Justice, which sold for USD 137,500 in the house's "Proof of Sovereignty" curated NFT sale in June 2021; the exact sale date is not specified in available sources. He also placed a work in Sotheby's "Contemporary Curated" online NFT sale that same year, at lot 112, with an opening bid of USD 500; the final realized price is not documented. A single source describes a separate work, All That Remains, as his highest-ever NFT sale, at 51 ETH, or roughly USD 200,000, on September 2, 2021; the sale platform for that transaction is not named in any source available, and no second source corroborates the figure, so it should be treated with caution rather than as a confirmed record. Since 2021, coverage describes his primary market as having moved to secondary NFT marketplaces, including Nifty Gateway, SuperRare, and Foundation, with no confirmed sale exceeding either the Christie's or the reported All That Remains figure through mid-2026.

Grassetti has no catalogue raisonne and no certificate-of-authenticity program; his NFT works are authenticated through blockchain and marketplace records rather than a conventional art-world verification apparatus, and his licensed toy and statue editions are verified through their manufacturers. No museum has been confirmed to hold his work in a permanent collection; one online listing claims exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and Tate Modern, but that text appears to be generic, templated marketing copy rather than a verified fact, and should not be relied upon. His confirmed price history is limited to two figures, one fully documented at Christie's and one resting on a single, uncorroborated secondary source, which means his market has almost no public track record to underwrite a valuation. Collectors should treat his documented gallery relationship, with AOTM Gallery, and his ongoing game-industry career at Naughty Dog as the more durable signals of his standing, rather than any single reported sale price.