Valerio Adami, “No Title”, 1964 – lithograph on paper

Valerio Adami was born in Bologna on March 17, 1935. He lives between Paris and Meina, on Lake Maggiore.

At the age of four he moved with his family to Milan during the war years where he made his first drawings that represent the ruins of houses devastated by bombing.

In the early 1960s he worked between London and Paris. Starting with a type of expressionist painting influenced by Bacon and later with a gestural painting, he returned to figuration following the echo and influence of American Pop Art; especially the artist Roy Lichtenstein.

The use of comics unites him with the research of the American painter but Adami goes further, starts from comics and grafted it onto a complex network of refined artistic references and symbols of high and popular culture.

Thus, in his compositions, a sort of fantastic and ironic comic story comes to life, where banal objects are arranged in depersonalized interiors, taken as symbols of modernity.

Valerio Adami‘s style is distinguished by the use of a chromatic material in flat, smooth and continuous drafts, within the clear black enclosures of the design.

Since his first solo exhibition in Milan in 1959 Valerio Adami has had numerous exhibitions around the world, and today his works are exhibited in many modern art museums as well as in private collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (MCA), Uffizi Gallery in Florence.