Piero Dorazio (Roma, 1927 – Perugia, 2005), was a prominent figure in European Abstractionism. Following World War II, he studied Architecture at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” but never completed his degree.
In 1945, he founded the collective Ariete, which later evolved into the Gruppo Arte Sociale. In 1947, he founded the Forma 1 group and published its manifesto. In 1948, he exhibited at the Quadriennale of Rome and the Salon des réalités nouvelles in Paris.
Over the following years, Dorazio embarked on numerous journeys across Europe, including Paris in 1947, as well as visits to the United States, where he worked in the fine arts department at the University of Pennsylvania. Back in Italy, in 1955 he published La Fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna, which he had worked on for three years. After extensive travels, he settled in Todi in 1974, establishing himself there.
Dorazio’s artwork has been exhibited widely, including at Documenta 2 in Kassel in 1959. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1956 and 1958, contributing a significant solo room in 1960 and holding a second solo exhibition in 1966. He held his first solo show at the La Tartaruga Gallery in Rome in 1957. He participated in the 1965 The Responsive Eye Show at MoMA in New York. In 1983 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, he held a retrospective exhibition. In the 1990s, major solo exhibitions of his work were held at the PAC in Milan (1988), the Musée de Grenoble (1990), the Galleria Civica in Bologna (1991), and the Civic Museum in Athens (1994).