Enter the Tiny World of Grandmondo Miniatures

Raphael Truffi Bortholuzzi makes fragile, intricate little worlds.

May 8, 2016, 12:35pm

All images courtesy of the artist

Sao Paulo’s Raphael Truffi Bortholuzzi works as an art director and motion graphics designer, but continues to create art in his spare time. In his work as Grandmondo Miniatures, Bortholuzzi creates tiny, intricate and thoroughly unglamorous scenes that could be plucked from everyday life.

Bortholuzzi tells The Creators Project that he tries in his miniatures to "recreate a proper atmosphere of [a] time or location,” and whether he’s rendering a street scene, a shabby garage, or Bilbo Baggins’ hobbit habitat, he spares no detail in his recreations. No detail but one: his works never feature human (or hobbit) figures, and are instead perfectly still renderings of unpopulated worlds.

"The non-use of human figures in my work is something important for me. Basically, I would like to develop a atmosphere in which the viewer create their own story,” says Bortholuzzi. “[By] leaving the scene cleaner without human figures, I end up expanding the imagination of those who are watching because the possibilities when building a story with just the scenery are numerous."

Rather than making us viewers of tiny scenes built by and for tiny people, Bortholuzzi’s work leaves space for us to project ourselves into his world, whether it's a grimy, graffiti-scrawled bathroom or rustic country well. And no matter what world he’s depicting, it’s likely to feature a classic car or two. Bortholuzzi is a car enthusiast, but he doesn’t create pristine miniatures of shiny vintage collector’s pieces—his cars are rusty and bombed out, with broken windshields and popped hoods already raided for parts. He spares no detail in his destruction, leaving no taillight intact, no window untracked. In this way, Bortholuzzi makes worlds that are perfectly imperfect, full of the beauty of all that’s broken.