"Intimacy"

PIERO DORAZIO

Piero Dorazio was born in Rome in 1927. After studying painting and classical drawing, from 1945 to 1951 the artist attended the faculty of architecture and joined the Arte Sociale group, which published one-off issues of “Ariele” and “La Fabbrica” In 1947 he participated in the founding of the Forma 1 group, which elaborates the Manifesto of Formalism-Form 1, and in the same year wins a scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he resides for a year and meets Gino Severini, Georges Braque, Georges Vantongerloo, Antoine Pevsner, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, Le Corbousier and other important artists. Piero Dorazio is known for his gestural paintings characterized by grids traversed by fluid, pulsating brushstrokes of color and luminosity. In the late 1940s the artist is strongly influenced by Giacomo Balla. In 1950 he participated in the organization of the Age d'Or group gallery in Rome and Florence, and in 1952 he became a promoter of the international foundation Origine in Rome, which published the periodical “Visual Arts.” Three years later, in 1953, he met Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Frederick Kiesler, Franz Kline, and Clement Greenberg in the United States and held his first solo shows at Wittenborn One-Wall Gallery and Rose Fried Gallery in New York In 1954 he returned to Rome but numerous trips to Paris, London, and Berlin continued In 1955 he published the book The Fantasy of Art in Modern Life In 1957 he traveled to Switzerland, Spain and to Antibes, and held his first solo exhibition in Rome, at Galleria La Tartaruga In the 1960s he held several academic positions in the United States In 1970 he traveled to Greece, Africa and the Middle East, and in 1974 he settled in Todi where he bought the Benedictine monastery of Canonica, at which he established his studio. Numerous anthological exhibitions were dedicated to him in Italy and abroad, including one at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1979), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo (1979) and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome (1983) The artist participated in the 1960, 1966 and 1988 Venice Biennale, and in the following years obtained commissions from public and private institutions. Piero Dorazio died in Perugia in 2005. The Piero Della Francesca Art Gallery in Arezzo collaborated with the artist for nearly 20 years, starting with his first solo exhibition, organized in 1977.