About nick maltagliati

Nick Maltagliati (he/him)

Contemporary Artist

Nick Maltagliati is an interdisciplinary artist and curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work spans painting, drawing, mixed media, and installation. His practice is rooted in landscape, movement, and abstraction, shaped by lived experience and an ongoing exploration of identity, place, and perception.

A Bay Area native, Maltagliati approaches landscape as a site of transformation rather than representation. Working with dynamic linework and shifting color relationships, he destabilizes traditional perspective to create what he describes as surrealistic “scapes.” Drawing visual data from his surroundings—California hillsides, pathways, water ripples, and the rhythms of typography—he builds compositions that feel both grounded and psychologically charged. Mountains, as products of ancient earth movements, recur as a central motif, reflecting both physical terrain and interior states.

Maltagliati works primarily in oil and watercolor, using gestural mark-making to convey a sense of lost mysticism and embodied movement. His process emphasizes motion, accumulation, and tension, allowing form to emerge through repetition and intuitive response rather than fixed structure.

He holds a BA in Art History and Studio Art from San Francisco State University and has exhibited widely throughout the Bay Area in solo and group exhibitions. In parallel with his studio practice, Maltagliati is deeply engaged in the local arts ecosystem, working as a preparator, coordinator, and curator for galleries and nonprofit organizations. He has also collaborated on projects supporting mutual aid efforts for California farmworkers, reflecting a commitment to community as an extension of artistic practice.