Born in São Paulo, of Italian parents who arrived in Brazil in the sixties, Mariannita spent her childhood between Milan and São Paulo. Her first contact with painting occurred in a self-taught way. 

She lived in a cultural environment, visiting museums and galleries since childhood, and her house was visited by artist Wesley Duke Lee and historian Pietro Maria Bardi, who became her mentors during her adolescence. 

The contact with these historical and contemporary environments played an important role in her artistic development. From 1982 to 1983 Mariannita Luzzati attended the Istituto per l’Arte e il Restauro in Florence, Italy; and in the mid-1980s she studied with Carlos Fajardo, Carmela Gross and Evandro Carlos Jardim in São Paulo and held her first institutional exhibitions in the late 1980s, participating in important group shows in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba. 

In 1991 she received first prize at the Brazil National Art Salon and in 1994 she moved to London, alternating seasons in São Paulo. 

In this period her work gained recognition, showing in exhibitions and in the collections of art museums in Brazil and abroad, including the Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo; Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo; National Museum of Rio de Janeiro; House der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin; the Museum of London; the British Museum and the 22nd International Biennial of São Paulo. 

In her recent works Mariannita Luzzati departs from her previous interest in landscape and the elementary forms associated with it: idyllic and contemplative. What can now be observed in the work are mountainous forms and human silhouettes, which could well be mountains in human format. “These images suggest that the viewer should contemplate and reflect on emptiness and silence, which for me is our greatest need today,” says the artist. 

In 2011 Mariannita Luzzati conceived and developed the Cinemúsica Project in collaboration with her husband, the pianist Marcelo Bratke – a project that was designed to bring multimedia performances to Brazilian prisons exploring the dialogue between music and moving images. 

Cinemúsica was performed in 10 penitentiaries of the State of São Paulo and Mariannita Luzzati produced and directed a documentary about the project. Since then, Cinemúsica has also been performed in important cultural institutions in Brazil and abroad. Among these are: the Southbank Center in London; Performing the World Festival in New York; Sarajevo Winter Festival; Sala São Paulo; Teatro da Paz in Belém and the Rio de Janeiro Opera Hall. The Cinemúsica Project was performed more than 60 times, receiving the Art of Touch Award at the Sarajevo Winter