Marco Melgrati is an Italian illustrator whose pictures work like visual jokes with a sting in the tail. Born in Milan in 1984, he graduated from the Santa Giulia School of Fine Arts in 2006 and chose illustration as his career, but early earnings were too low to live on in Italy, so he became a digital nomad, living at various times in Mexico, Colombia, Thailand and Lithuania. His editorial work has since appeared in publications including The Economist, The Guardian, Nature, GQ, Politico, Variety, The Boston Globe and Corriere della Sera, and his Instagram following runs to around half a million people.
Most of his work is commissioned by magazines and newspapers, so it often responds to the news of the moment. His method is the visual metaphor: a familiar object (a mirror, a lectern, a fairy-tale prince) is swapped for something that makes a point about politics, money, social media, gender or our place in the universe. He typically sketches by hand, then finishes digitally in Photoshop and Corel Painter, while some personal projects are painted in oils and acrylics. The twenty illustrations below are grouped by theme, with a note on what each one shows and how it is commonly read.
More of his work: Marco Melgrati on Instagram
Politics, power and money
A politician speaks earnestly into a microphone, hand on heart, but the shadow he casts on the wall has a long Pinocchio nose. Politicians' lies are one of Melgrati's recurring subjects, and the shadow trick lets the picture say two things at once: the image he presents and the one the light reveals.
A giant head with a familiar sweep of blond hair, clearly modelled on Donald Trump, peers over a long wall across a desert of cacti, where a tiny figure tends a plant. The picture refers to the border wall with Mexico that Trump promised during his 2016 campaign. The scale says everything about who holds the power in this scene.
A balance scale holds a tall pile of gold coins on one side and a single capsule on the other, and the capsule wins. It can be read as a comment on the price of medicine, or on how health outweighs any amount of money. Melgrati often leaves this kind of double reading open on purpose.
An empty lectern stands at the top of a staircase whose steps are made of bundled banknotes. The message is simple: the route to the podium is paved with money. It fits the artist's wider interest in capitalism, power and the financial system.
A small white chicken struts across a salmon-pink background while its shadow takes the shape of a spreading eagle. The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States, which gives the picture an obvious political edge, but it also works as a gentle joke about anyone who projects a grander image than reality supports.
One of the red stripes of the American flag turns into an ammunition belt that feeds a machine gun lying on the ground. Gun violence and the debate over weapons are among the themes Melgrati returns to, and this image ties the issue directly to national identity.
Social media and the self we perform
A tired-looking woman with a painter's palette carefully paints a glowing, smiling version of herself onto a giant phone showing the Instagram interface. It is a neat metaphor for filters and curated selfies: the online portrait is something we craft, not simply capture.
A man stands on a dark street looking at a row of phone-shaped windows, each displaying an Instagram post of a woman posing in her underwear. The layout deliberately echoes the shop windows of a red-light district. It is a sharp comment on how social media can turn self-presentation into a kind of display window.
A wooden confessional booth carries the Facebook "f" on its side. People confess their lives to the platform as freely as they once might have to a priest, but the listener here is a company. Sharing personal data with tech firms is one of the subjects Melgrati has tackled repeatedly.
An old fisherman sits on the ground mending a net that is woven entirely from hashtag symbols, with a bucket of his catch beside him. Hashtags are, after all, tools for trawling for attention. The calm, traditional figure makes the modern habit look strangely old.
Two robots slug it out in a toy boxing ring while a giant thumb on a controller decides the fight. The setup recalls the classic boxing-robot toys, and the oversized thumb hints at how much of today's conflict is steered by thumbs on screens.
Love, gender and fairy tales
Aladdin rises towards Princess Jasmine's balcony, but instead of a magic carpet he is standing on a gold credit card. The reference is Disney's 1992 film, where the carpet ride is the great romantic moment. Melgrati swaps magic for money and asks how much of modern romance is bought.
A fairy-tale prince and Cinderella embrace, but the picture is cracked like glass, and through the hole we see a red, violent version of the same couple: his hand gripping her, her face frightened. It is a stark image about abuse hidden behind a perfect public image.
An oval hand mirror has a knife blade in place of its handle. The picture suggests how the pursuit of beauty, and harsh self-judgment in front of the mirror, can wound. It is one of the simplest images in the set.
A woman in a red hat stands in a gallery in front of a large pale-pink disc, and from behind, her hat sits exactly where a nipple would be. The visual pun plays with the way bodies are looked at, censored and treated as art. The little museum label beside her completes the joke.
A couple embrace while floating in black water filled with stars, so that sea and sky become one. It is one of Melgrati's gentler images, a picture of intimacy as a small refuge in a vast universe.
A woman in a long red dress scrubs or paints a white curved surface while a masked, armed guard watches from a distance. The scene is deliberately ambiguous, and viewers have read it as a comment on censorship, control or forced labour. Leaving the reading open is part of how the image works.
Humans seen from the outside
Aliens visit a zoo where the animals on display are a naked human couple sitting behind a fence, complete with an information sign, while a zebra wanders freely outside. Role reversals with aliens are a running theme in Melgrati's work. The scene asks how our own zoos look from the other side of the bars.
An alien relaxes in an armchair with a glass of wine, its feet resting on an astronaut laid out flat like a rug, while a helmeted skull hangs on the wall like a hunting trophy. The picture turns big-game trophy rooms on their head by putting humans in the role of the hunted.
At night, a monkey climbs to the top of a palm tree and stretches out an arm towards a crescent moon. It can be read as the first stirring of human ambition, the urge that would one day lead to real Moon landings, or simply as a picture of longing for the unreachable.
Why visual metaphors stay with us
Editorial illustration has to work in seconds, often next to a headline, and Melgrati's approach suits that perfectly. Each picture relies on one swap: a wall for a border, a credit card for a carpet, a hashtag for a fishing net. You recognise the object first and the argument a moment later, and that small delay is what makes the idea stick. The images are not neutral. Some are blunt political statements, others are open to several readings, and part of their value is the conversation they start about what the artist intended and whether you agree.
Sources: Pixartprinting: Marco Melgrati and his sharp critique of society (biography, clients, themes and methods); illustrations by Marco Melgrati.
Interesting images and thought provoking! But I only think that a few - "depict the harsh truth of modern society"!
ReplyDeleteSo a "clickbait" headline!