Piero Dorazio (1927-2005) - Composizione Astratta

\Artist: Piero Dorazio (1927-2005)
Technique: Acquaforte acquatinta\Signature: Hand signed
Original aquatint etching, three engraved plates, 1990, on refined Rives Moulin du Gué paper, 56 x 76, edition of only 130 copies. Embossed stamp of the publisher and certificate of authenticity in accordance with the law. The serial number may be different from the one shown in the photos. Numbered and signed personally by the master. In 1951 he founded the Fondazione Origine, which he left in 1954. In 1953 he was invited to Harvard University to take part in an international seminar on humanism and the arts. He moved to New York, where he established bonds with many American artists and where he presented his first exhibition of drawings at the gallery of George Wittenborn, the One-wall Gallery. In April 1954, the Rose Fried Gallery hosted his first solo exhibition in New York. After he went back to Italy, in 1955 he published “La fantasia dell’Arte nella vita moderna”, an outline of modern trends in visual arts, the first book of this kind to appear in Italy and on which he had worked for three years. In 1957 he presented his first solo exhibition in Rome, at La Tartaruga gallery. In 1956 and 1958 he participated in the Venice Biennale where, in 1960, he presented a large personal room. The same year he went back to the United States, to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he was appointed to reorganise and direct the Department of Fine Arts, a position he held for the next ten years, teaching one semester a year. In 1959 he participated in Documenta 2 in Kassel. In the sixties his works were regularly included in major group exhibitions in Italy and at an international level. In 1961 he received the Prix Kandinsky and the prize of the Paris Biennale (one million francs that he refused in protest against the French war policy in Algeria) . In 1962 he was invited to be part of Gruppo Zero, later participating in many group exhibitions and publications of the group, and in 1965 he participated in the exhibition “The Responsive Eye” at the Mo. MA - Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1966 he presented a second solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale, and the following year he worked with Giuseppe Ungaretti on the volume “La Luce” (a collection of 20 of his poems with 14 large-sized lithographs) for the Im Erker gallery in St. Gallen, Switzerland. In 1968 Dorazio settled in Berlin for six months, invited by the German Academy. In Rome and Berlin he actively participated in the revolt of the student movement. In 1969 he moved to the countryside near Rome and devoted himself more and more exclusively to painting. In the seventies he worked on many solo exhibitions and travelled to Greece, the Middle East, and Africa. In 1974 he moved to Todi, where he definitively established his home and studio in Canonica, in a restored Camaldolese hermitage. He worked on sets and costumes for the Teatro alla Scala and on artist books, illustrations, devoting himself to the production of prints and engravings. In 1977 a monograph was published with a contribution to the catalogue raisonné for publisher Alfieri. In 1979 his first retrospective exhibition was held in France, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The exhibition was later presented at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, and in many museums in the United States. In the eighties he continued to paint often and to cultivate friendships with many artists and exponents of the Italian and international cultural and political life, also thanks to his participation in the Italian cultural debate from the pages of “Corriere della Sera”, with which he started a regular collaboration. In 1983 he opened a retrospective exhibition of his works at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, and he participated with a selection of works in the exhibition “Italian Art 1960-1980” at the Hayward Gallery, London. In 1986 he received the Prize of the Accademia di San Luca. In 1988 he presented his personal room at the Venice Biennale. In the nineties his work was presented in various exhibitions, including an extensive anthological exhibition at the Museé de Grenoble in 1990, at the Civic Gallery of Bologna in 1991, and a solo exhibition at the Civic Museum of Athens in 1994 and at the Pac of Milan in 1988. In 1990 he received the Alcide de Gasperi Prize for arts and sciences. In 1993 he was appointed as a member of the Akademie der Künste of Berlin. In 1997 he received the Michelangelo Prize from the Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon. Between 1994 and 1996 he directed the execution of artist mosaics in the stations of the Rome underground, designing one for the Colosseum stop. In 2000 the gallery of Achim Moeller in New York presented an exhibition of his works from the fifties. In the same year he received the Scipione Prize from the Carima Foundation of Macerata. In 2001 the “Dorazio Jazz” exhibition was opened at the Museion of Bolzano. The great retrospective exhibition at the IVAM (Institut Valencia D’Art Modern, Valencia) was held in 2003. He died in Perugia on 17 May 2005.