Matthew Ricci (b. 1998, South Australia) is a painter working at the intersection of abstraction and figuration. Originally trained in mathematical sciences and economics, he turned to painting as the more honest language for what he was trying to understand, the irrational, embodied, often contradictory nature of human experience.

Ricci works in oil paint, soft pastels, charcoal, and graphite on cotton canvas, frequently stretched directly onto concrete walls to hold up against his physical process. Paintings begin with automatic drawing and accumulate through layers of washes, erasures, and reworking. A back and forth between chaos and control in which figures are discovered rather than planned.

His paintings move through identity, memory, sexuality, and the body as a site of lived experience. Coming from a life shaped by active resistance, he is drawn to the contradictions of contemporary selfhood, the tension between performed individuality and authentic identity. Cultural symbols recur across the work: high heels, blonde hair, the contorted figure, each carrying cultural and sexual weight without being explained.

Informed by Jungian psychology and the theory of the collective unconscious, Ricci understands his mark-making as a way of surfacing collective truths in symbolic form. Recent work has focused on the process of self individualisation. Painters such as Marlene Dumas, Francis Bacon, Hilma af Klint, and de Kooning are touchstones, as is a broader philosophical interest in consciousness and the idea of painting as a truth-revealing act.

In 2025 he was awarded the Chianciano Art Museum Award at the London Biennale and was selected as a finalist in both the Waverley Art Prize (also a finalist in 2026), Sydney, and the Jackson Art Prize. His work appears in private collections internationally.

Education:

Bachelor of Economics (Advanced), Adelaide University (2021)
Bachelor of Mathematical Sciences, Adelaide University (2021)

Group Exhibitions:

Waverley Art Prize, Sydney (2026)
Maremoto by Peninsula group, Berlin (2025)
Waverley Art Prize, Sydney (2025)
London Biennale, Chelsea Town Hall, (2025)
BAAM (Curated), Berlin art fair, (2024).

Solo Exhibitions:

Matthew Ricci at Unkompress, Berlin Vernissage, (2024).
CURATED Presents Matthew Ricci, An Afternoon of Live Drawing, (2023).

Prizes & Awards:

Finalist Waverley Art Prize, Sydney (2026)
Recipient of the Chianciano Art Museum Award at the London Biennale (2025)
Finalist Waverley Art Prize, Sydney (2025)
Finalist Jackson Art Prize (2025)