19 Mar-9 Apr 2008. The Monty & Company Art Gallery in Rome's colourful Monti neighbourhood displays the works of the contemporary painter Eugenio Sgaravatti.

The painter, who lives on the Appia Antica but who comes from a Venetian family of botanists, defines himself as a self-taught artist who matured his artistic vocation during the numerous journeys he made for FAO, where he used to work.

From his habit of collecting cars, stamps, wooden elephants, as well as languages, Sgaravatti developed a sort of obsession for the repetition of geometrical elements in his paintings that constantly recall mathematical outlines. Although his art is apparently abstract, his paintings always hide some sort of form, a sudoku schedule, a skyscraper or a human figure. In order to understand his paintings better, Sgaravatti suggests his viewers imagine flying over the countryside on a clear day in June. They would see an endless expanse of coloured rectangles formed by yellow corn fields, green grass and red tennis courts, crossed by roads, which form suggestive land art as well as unintentional sudoku.

The artist uses metallic colours, glittering paints, oil paintings, temperas and acrylics, spread on wood boards or aluminium slabs, then lacquered as in a car