Piero Dorazio

Piero Dorazio was born in Rome in 1927. In 1947 he was one of the founders of Gruppo Forma 1 with Perilli, Accardi, Attardi, Sanfilippo and Maugeri.

In 1950 he broke away from Forma 1, joining the Arte Concreta group with Perilli and Guerrini.

He took part in his first Venice Biennale at Prampolini’s invitation in 1952.

In those years Dorazio organised the exhibition “Italian and French Abstract Art” at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, where he introduced the first signs of colour in geometrically ordered flat drafts.

He also exhibited at the 1956 and 1958 Venice Biennales. In 1960 he sets up a room at the Venice Biennale and in this period he created geometric compositions on large free drawings with flat colour layers.

In 1966 he had a solo room at the Venice Biennale with monochrome works on a rough background. From the second half of the 1960s he worked on dynamic formal situations enclosed in horizontal grids; in the second half of the 1970s he thickened the fabric of minimal tracings with horizontal sign-colour drawing.

In 1970 he curated the Rothko retrospective at the Venice Biennale, and in 1988 he held another solo exhibition at the Biennale. He died in Todi in 2005. Dorazio’s works can be found in all the world’s major museums: Peggy Guggenheim, Venice; GNAM Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum Kunst Palast, Hamburg; Neue Pinakothek, Berlin; B.S.N Niigata Art Museum, Japan; Tate Gallery, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; MOMA Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago; Kunstmuseum, Basel and many others.