Maurizio Massi was born in Rome in 1938. He attended the Free School of the Nude at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and in the late 1950s began exhibiting in several Roman galleries. He became friends with important artists and intellectuals of the time, who contributed to the development of his pictorial imagination.

In his paintings, wonderful surreal scenes are filled with characters that present the vices and virtues of humankind with lightness and elegant irreverence. He privileges oils, covering his small-scale canvases with precise, thin paint strokes. In this way, he produces the Pierrots, Little Nuns, Clowns, Architectures and Museums, which have found success with international collectors, particularly in America.