Antonietta Grassi

Born in Montreal, Canada, Antonietta Grassi is a Canadian artist whose paintings examine the intersections of abstraction, textile histories, women’s labour, and the origins of digital technology. Trained as a textile designer before pursuing a career in fine art, Grassi creates complex painted surfaces that draw upon the visual language of weaving to explore textiles as both cultural artifacts and early systems of information.

For more than three decades, her practice has investigated how textile traditions have shaped the development of abstraction while revealing the often-overlooked contributions of women to the histories of craft, industry, and computation. By bringing together painting, pattern, and material memory, Grassi reconsiders the relationship between hand and machine, analogue and digital, positioning textiles as foundational to both artistic and technological innovation.

Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums and public institutions throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Expo Dubai, Katonah Museum of Art, Project: ARTspace (New York), the Boston Center for the Arts, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Cambridge Art Galleries, Kunstwerk Carlshütte (Germany), Museo MAACK (Italy), and Sueño 339 (Seoul, South Korea).

Grassi’s work is represented in numerous public, corporate, and private collections, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul, McGill University, Global Affairs Canada, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Archives of Ontario, Air Canada, Capital One at MIT, Rutgers Research Center, Groupe Desjardins, Boston Public Library, Museo MAACK, Caesars Palace, CoStar Group, Google and Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has participated in artist residencies including ISCP (New York), the CALQ Studio in New York, Ragdale Foundation, MASS MoCA Studios, the Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Centre Sagamie, and the Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul.

Grassi’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Whitehot Magazine, Vie des Arts, The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, esse arts + opinions, Le Devoir, Le Soleil, Canadian Art, La Presse, Montréal ETC, Akimbo, and DAZE Magazine. Upcoming solo exhibitions include the Prince Takamado Gallery at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, and the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke.

Grassi holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University and a Master of Fine Arts from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She lives and works in Montreal, Canada.