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Saucony ProGrid Ride 1, the art of movement

June 23, 2026

To celebrate the arrival of the Saucony Progrid Ride 1, we created a photo series built around movement, color, and material. To accompany this silhouette, which blends running heritage, everyday comfort, and a luminous aesthetic, we met with visual artist Silvio Mildonian in his studio, at the heart of his universe, surrounded by his works and his practice.

With its white base, Buttercup yellow accents, and lightweight mesh construction, the Progrid Ride 1 evokes a solar energy that is both sporty and urban. A sneaker designed for movement, which we wanted to showcase through the eyes of an artist.

In the rest of the article, Silvio Mildonian reveals himself to the rhythm of the pair, telling us a little more about his story, his creative process, and his relationship with color.

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Family 3.0: To start, can you quickly introduce yourself and tell us how you got into painting?

Silvio Mildonian: My name is Silvio Mildonian, I'm 34 years old, I'm from Marseille, born in Marseille, and I've been painting since I was 18-19. I came to painting through pure graffiti, from which I later emancipated myself to embrace a full-fledged painter's practice and develop a more personal pictorial research, in the intimacy of the studio.

How would you describe your work to someone seeing it for the first time?

My work is characterized by compositional research based on color, movement, and a so-called "digested" figuration that tends towards a form of abstraction. One could speak of concrete painting. Expression through gesture and color plays a central role, as does the vocabulary of memory and remembrance. It is a painting of sensation, which often evokes in an indirect and fantasized way the landscape and daily life of Marseille that presents itself to me every day, as well as the various influences that, at times, exert an inexplicable action.

You started as a self-taught artist after an initial introduction to graffiti. What has that culture brought to your painting style today?

Graffiti culture has brought me a lot. It allowed me to approach the practice without strict pictorial rules, to confront rapid and effective execution within a short time frame. It nourished my gesture and my senses, my ability to make quick and effective compositional choices. This "school" also gave me creative freedom: I was not subjected to academic pressure. Graffiti also allowed me to define myself socially through uncompromising expression; it offered me an "artist family." I was able to experiment in a group and share painting with exceptional comrades who brought me a lot and inspired me. This culture also partly defined my vision of color, which aims to be effective and expressive. A thought for Antoine.

In your works, there is a lot of energy, movement, and spontaneity. Do you paint more instinctively, or are your paintings very much constructed beforehand?

I think my painting is constructed both upstream, with the creation of drawings between more classical studio production times and great moments of reflection and personal research, and in action, the spontaneity of gesture, and instinctiveness. All these aspects are worked on beforehand; they don't come from nowhere. Based on this solid foundation of research, I can draw on my reflexes and intuition in front of the canvas. It is this mix of research work and sensation in the execution that allows me to produce strong and recognizable paintings.

What role does color play in your work?

Color plays a central role: it is a vector of sensations, feelings, emotions, territory, memories, and remembrance. It is very important for me to express myself through it. Through its directness and radicality, it highlights the certain expressiveness that characterizes me.

There is often a very personal dimension to your painting. Does each painting tell something about you?

I believe each painting necessarily tells a part of me, or something that characterizes me and makes me who I am. This could be a person, a memory, a moment, or so many other things. I am not always able to precisely identify, at the moment, where in the painting this resides. Sometimes I understand afterward why a color, a shape, or a gesture returned in such a way; the canvas spoke before I did. Some paintings thus escape me for a long time, but they still exist. That's also what painting is: doubt and incomprehension in the face of one's own creation. Others reveal themselves more quickly, almost on their own. There is a part of mystery, and even mysticism, in all production.

You are based in Provence. To what extent does the region influence your work, even indirectly?

Provence is a vector of sensation and atmosphere: a particular light, a dry climate, a sometimes flat landscape that allows the horizon to reveal itself to the eye, often with mountains or hills in the distance. For me, this evokes contemplation, a sense of timelessness, poetry, and the stories of our elders, who describe a sweet, peaceful, pleasant life, sometimes filled with effort and under the guidance of a scorching sun, but always with joy and optimism.

What else would you like to explore in the coming years?

In the coming years, above all else, I would like to retain the pleasure and wonder of creation, of painting. I would like to be able to paint into old age, always to have that knot in my stomach when an idea comes to me, that excitement for the next day in the studio. The avenues of research in painting are infinite and multiple; anything can happen in painting. My primary and foremost wish is to paint happily and in tune with who I am and what surrounds me. To create for as long as possible, whether in painting or through another medium. In a way, to explore life as a whole.

Many thanks to Saucony and Silvio Mildonian for their trust in this project. The Saucony ProGrid Ride 1 is available for a closer look below, before its release on June 26th at 10 AM, online and in-store at Family 3.0. As a small gift from us, each pair purchased will come with a t-shirt designed in collaboration with the artist.