Biography
Benedetto Amadeus in the Chiasso studio, 2025. Photograph by Elena Ferri.
Where the houses touch
Benedetto Amadeus was born in Locarno in 1981 and raised in Cevio, a stone village in the Valle Maggia. The houses there are built against one another, sharing walls and roofs, close enough that a conversation carries. In winter, most of them are empty.
He left at nineteen. First Milan, to study painting at Brera; then Zurich, for a master's and nine years of work. The building he lived in held twenty-eight apartments. He learned the name of no one in it.
It took him a while to see that the valley and the city were describing the same thing. The paintings began there.
On returning
He came back to Ticino in 2017 and took a former freight depot in Chiasso, on the border. He has worked there since. The subject has not changed — only the rooms it turns up in.