Piero Dorazio

Piero Dorazio is born in Rome in 1927. From an early age, he visits the studios of painters in his city. After the Second World War, he finishes his studies in classics and architecture at the University of Rome and in Paris. His first exhibitions date from the 1940’s, when he shows canvases and drawings with clear references to Futurism, a movement which interests him above all for its lines and strength. Along with Perilli, Accardi, Attardi Consagra, Guerrini, Sanfilippo and Turcato, he forms the group “Forma 1”, which can be characterized as ideologically opposed to the political views of socialist realism, defenders of abstract art and promoters of the revitalization of Italian art. At the beginning of the 1950’s, Dorazio begins to arrange geometric forms across the canvas, but at the same time, imposing a certain disorder and with a dynamism marked by very simple signs, lights and colors. At the end of the decade, his investigations are centered on color and his search for space. He moves to America where he lives until 1970 and where he teaches at the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Having traveled through nearly the entire world, in 1974 he settles in Todi (Perugia). He has held exhibitions in Osaka, Bologna, Milan, Paris and Frankfurt. He has participated in the Venice Biennale of 1952, 1960, 1966 and 1988. In recent years there have been several retrospectives of his work: in Grenoble and Bologna in 1991, in Athens in 1994, in Milan in 1998 and in Rome in 1999. IVAM has organized a retrospective of his work, which includes 60 large format paintings dating from 1948 to 2002.