About.

VON MAI (FRANCESCO MAGGIO) is an Italian composer, visual artist, and philosopher of art (born in 1986 in Poggiardo, Lecce), whose research blends music, digital art, philosophy, and theological aesthetics into a single metamorphic vision of reality.

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Trained in composition and electronic music at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and refined under internationally renowned masters including Ivan Fedele and Guido Baggiani, his music has been commissioned and performed by prestigious ensembles, orchestras, and festivals in major theaters and concert halls worldwide — from Carnegie Hall in New York to Teatro Dal Verme in Milan.

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In 2020, during the global suspension caused by the pandemic, the artistic identity Von Mai was born. In a moment of creative silence, the musical rest — represented by the quarter rest symbol — transformed into the concept of REST-ART: silence no longer as absence, but as a womb and a promise of rebirth.

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Through a gestural and radical act, the artist began tearing and recomposing his musical scores on canvas, creating textured collages and visual works where sound is transfigured into light and color. His aesthetic spans from physical collages to digital generative art, integrating artificial intelligence and algorithms. For Von Mai, technology does not replace the human act; instead, it participates in a dialogue between artificial intelligence, computation, and pictorial gesture, almost always completed by hand interventions.

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At the heart of his thought lies the PHILOSOPHIE DER METAMORPHOSE and the VON MAI FOUNDATION, an institution created primarily as an act of giving back: a way to return to the world what art has given him. The Foundation actively promotes cultural diplomacy and global dialogue among peoples through the arts by organizing artist residencies, international exhibitions, concerts, and multidisciplinary events.