Who we are
Milano Painting Academy is a highly innovative and professional academy of advanced training in drawing and painting, which revives the disciplines and principles used in the workshops of the great Renaissance masters in a modern way, in which students worked from “real life” and under the natural light, and teaching has a strong focus on practice and a specific training method called MPA
Among the many innovations and countless advantages, the innovative MPA method allows students to easily enter the existing work group at any time of the year, thanks to an open cycle structure, i.e. no distinction of classes and academic years, and with teaching sessions in which students are followed directly by teachers.
Our values
Milano Painting Academy was born from a strongly “anti-academic” idea.
“Anti-academic” because – unlike other institutions that teach drawing and painting favouring a purely theoretical teaching method – Milano Painting Academy brings “doing” back to the centre of the experience, teaching how to produce art with a process that is not mediated between teachers and students and with a clear educational idea “drawing is a planning and fact-finding process, and not a purely aesthetic experience”.
Milano Painting Academy is a large workshop that, just like in the great Renaissance workshops, focuses on doing, an academy in which we all work together, in a continuous and direct comparison, for an experience of artistic and aesthetic growth in the field, because traditional teaching, according to which artistic practice is completely subordinate to an expanse of theoretical knowledge, in fact flattens and reduces the interest in learning the art of painting and produces critics, not artists.
All this does not mean neglecting the intellectual and cultural growth of the students, which is also entrusted to “voices and intelligences” of great value and extroversion, the separate educational aspects are concentrated and are consistent with the Academy’s Vision, which is that the heart of everything it is the practice of drawing and therefore of painting.
Milano Painting Academy teaches art as it has been done for centuries: getting your hands dirty every day in the “workshop”.
The Creation
Milano Painting Academy was created in Milan in the spring of 2021 from the combined efforts of the founding members and of the Maimeri Foundation, a working group that has long been committed to promoting artistic practice as an expression of its social responsibility.
Milano Painting Academy answers the specific desire to create an art school that is a free space, where you can express your talent and demonstrate your perception without constraints, thanks to learning a technical background of a training course that goes from traditional techniques to contemporary stylistic suggestions and influences, up to the latest trends and research.
For such a project, a highly suggestive urban space was chosen in which teaching, studios and artists’ residences coexist, and where seminars, workshops and exhibitions of the work of apprentices and guests are organised.
Community
Milano Painting Academy and its cultural community develop ideas and actions of inclusion, recognising themselves in a pluralistic and multicultural design. Sharing the same basic artistic language, as a technical equipment, allows all students to communicate effectively through common knowledge and common experiences.
Milano Painting Academy embodies the spirit of the great studios, the spirit of those places where, from collaboration and sharing, the work of art was born in a creative act that belonged to the Artist and the disciples and apprentices, whose training took place precisely thanks to the practice in the field, or rather from the comparison with the work and study group and from the constant and immediate checks by the teacher.
