Born in Marilia, Brazil, in 1956, Julio Villani lives and works in São Paulo and Paris, where he settled during the 80's, after studying fine arts at FAAP, São Paulo, Watford School of Arts, London and ESNBA, Paris.
Reflecting his double path, the list of his exhibitions crisscrosses over the Atlantic time and again: MAM and the Zadkine Museum, Paris, the Pinacoteca and MAM, São Paulo, the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, the Ludwig Foundation, Aachen, the Museo del Barrio, New York.
His work, prolix and multifaceted (painting, embroidered drawings, video, collages, assemblages), is built in an infinity of metaforms pertaining to themes revolving around displacement, instability, and the infinite and borderless worlds offered by life and fantasy. Alternately adopting geometry or the tools of childhood, nourished by references, the artist is constantly on the lookout for the poetry lurking in the heart of the most trivial remains, for the unforeseen particule concealed in the thousand-times-seen: daily objects and reverie stand for Villani as the two sides of the same reality, much like the obverse and reverse of an embroidery.
It is not surprising he has retained this technique for the production of a monumental, site-specific project at the Thoronet Abbey in 2019, made at the invitation of the Palais de Tokyo.