Born in March 1935, this major painter of Narrative Figuration, is famous for his flat areas of acidic colors and his sharp shapes contoured by a thick black line, which he meticulously spreads on the canvas like a comic book.
Italian by origin and Parisian by adoption, the first drawings of his childhood were those of Milan in ruins in the wake of the war.
After an introduction to painting in Felice Carena's studio in Venice, where he also met Oskar Kokoschka, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.
He came out with a style strongly marked by Matta's surrealism, which would characterize the works presented at his first solo exhibition in 1957.
His life was later divided between France and Italy, while he developed his Figurative Language between two trips to India and Cuba.
The themes of consumer society, women, history, history, literature, literature, music and poetry gradually seep into his painting, characterized by fragmented surfaces that are entirely saturated with bright colors.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Valerio Adami evolved in the circles of Narrative Figuration and New Realism, with which he shared the same political commitment and the same attachment to the representation of reality.
Shortly after he moved to Paris in 1970, the Museum of Modern Art devoted an exhibition to him, followed, in 1985, by the Pompidou Center, then the Grand Palais (exhibition “La Figuration Narrative”, 2008).
To date, Valerio Adami is being talked about all over the world.
“I started drawing, and therefore building my life as an artist, when I was eight or nine. Very early on, I only lived for painting. That was my first expression. Even though I have written texts, what matters to me is drawing. And he alone.”
Valerio Adami