La Loffredo Foundation for Arts & Inclusion presents Wild by Design, a contemporary art exhibition by Marco Grasso, on view from April 1 to 13, 2026, at the ADI Design Museum in Milan. A simple yet revolutionary dialogue between nature and design, the show proves that they are two faces of the same ongoing, beautiful search for solutions that unite functionality, sustainability, and beauty.
Wild by Design marks the latest expression from the rising artist Marco Grasso, born in 2000, curated by Elena Di Raddo. The exhibition is hosted at the ADI Design Museum from April 1 to 13, 2026 and is made possible with the support of the Loffredo Foundation for Arts & Inclusion, an organization that supports emerging and established artists alike in their education and professional growth, aiming to amplify talent and generate tangible cultural and social impact through art. The project unfolds within Iconic Art System, an integrated cultural ecosystem that blends physical and virtual experiences, where dialogue among the public, collectors, and art professionals becomes an essential part of the cultural process.
Grasso is a painter specializing in wildlife art, creating oil portraits on canvas of animals captured in moments and poses that reveal their physical traits and character. The subjects are rendered in all their majesty and individuality through paint, studied in minute detail with a photographic eye.
The artist explains: “When I was a child, I went with my brother Nicolò into the forests of Piedmont at dawn. We would say, ‘Look how that owl flies—he makes no sound.’ Years later, I learned that engineers at Siemens spent months studying exactly those feathers, those micro-tooth structures along the wing edges that break the air flow. Today, the world’s quietest wind turbine blades replicate that same geometry.”
From that insight sprang the idea for the show and its setting at the ADI Design Museum, Milan’s institution that spreads the culture of design nationally and internationally through temporary exhibitions and the custody and display of the permanent collection of the Compasso d’Oro prize, deemed a “work of exceptional artistic and historical interest” by the Italian Ministry of Culture since 2004. Indeed, nature can be considered the first designer in history—and perhaps the most ingenious. Wild by Design seeks to dismantle the conventional divide that pits Nature, an ancestral, pristine force, against Design, the expression of human artifice and intention. Nature is not the antithesis of the project, but its first, most ingenious, tireless author. The animals that populate Grasso’s canvases become perfect prototypes, not only aesthetic subjects but living solutions to complex problems with intrinsic function.
Sustainability, in this broader context, takes on a more expansive meaning: it is not merely a modern ethical option, but the founding principle of life itself. Evolution is a perfect circular economy in which every animal is 100% sustainable in itself—not because it is virtuous, but because otherwise existence would be impossible.
The exhibition pathway begins on the museum’s ground floor with a digital installation curated by Parallelia AI Creative Studio, illustrating how animal nature and design objects originate from one another.
The show is organized into four sections. The first is devoted to structural and kinetic camouflage. The piece Flight depicts a kingfisher, famous for its slender beak that allows it to dive into water at high speed. This bird inspired engineer and birdwatching enthusiast Eiji Nakatsu to redesign the Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train, shaping the vehicle’s snout to mirror the bird’s beak, addressing issues of noise, consumption, and speed, and becoming a global benchmark for aerodynamic efficiency.
The second section contemplates optical warfare and brand identity, showing how nature uses patterns not as mere decoration but as systems of communication and protection. Examples include the zebras in Love in Black and White and the roaring lion in Born of Fire, where striping confusion or the psychological armor of a mane create optical illusions.
The third part centers on the mathematics of nature and sustainability, linking Grasso’s works to the idea that natural beauty follows precise mathematical laws studied and applied by designers. Finally, the fourth section is dedicated to functional integration and the future — the capstone of the biomimicry approach where form resides in function, as in Grace, which portrays a swan with a sinuous neck.
Through his art and these portraits, Marco Grasso offers more than beautiful animals; he provides new keys to interpretation. Each brushstroke captures not only shape but function. Not only appearance, but principle. It is art that becomes knowledge; primordial knowledge that becomes creative action. His canvases should be viewed not only by art lovers but also by designers, engineers, and the curious.
Photo credits: Marco Grasso
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