Marc Travanti

Marc Travanti is an American contemporary artist. His practice includes painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and video.

Early life and education

Travanti was born in 1956 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater and a MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. He lives and works in New York and Wisconsin.

Career Travanti’s art often involves some sort of duality. He has connected images of cell towers and early 20th century American sculpture; African masks and corporate logos; naked human bodies and stock market charts; and portraits of the living with renowned portraits from the distant past. Totemic compositions are often used, particularly in his sculptural wall work.

His art has been described as "modern artifacts; a combination of primal elements of simple organic shapes with a modern sensibility". His video work features cross-dissolves of his photographs and photocollages. Travanti's video entitled Entanglement "shows male and female figures twined around each other in ways that evoke tantric sex, wrestling, and the incarnations of Hindu deities".