Piero Dorazio

BIOGRAPHY

EXHIBITIONS

CATALOGS

WORK

Piero Dorazio was born in Rome where, after completing his classical studies, he studied architecture for four years. In the first post-war period he attended Renato Guttuso's studio, but he soon moved away from the theses of socialist realism and joined the abstract movement. In 1947 he was among the signatories of the manifesto of the Forma 1 Group, together with Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo, Giulio Turcato and Carla Accardi in open opposition to socialist realism, expressionism, the Roman School, denouncing the intrusion of politics in artistic creation. Also in 1947 he won a scholarship from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, where he will reside for a year. With Perilli and Guerrini in 1950 he opened the “L'Age d'Or” library-gallery in via del Babuino, Rome, a cooperative between artists for the dissemination of avant-garde international art and press. The latter in 1951 will merge with the “Origine” group of Mario Ballocco, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla, giving life to the “Origine Foundation”, in which Colla and Dorazio publish the magazine “Arti Visive”. From 1953 he moved to the United States, in this period Dorazio also concentrated on the study of the writings of Vasilij Vasil'evič Kandinskij, whose theory on the immaterial aspects of painting would greatly influence him. In 1961 in Berlin, he participated in the activity of the Zero Group together with Heinz Mach, Otto Pine and Gunter Uecher, of which he organized the first American exhibition in 1964, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. In 1974 he moved to Todi, in Umbria, and continued to create here until 2005, the year of his death.