Valerio ADAMI (b. 1935) - Lot 15

Valerio ADAMI (b. 1935) Woman and dog Original serigraph justified 57/90 Signed lower right in pencil H. 90 x L. 70 cm Note: Born in March 1935, this major painter of the Figuration Narrative movement is famous for his acid-colored flat tints and clean shapes outlined in thick black, which he painstakingly spreads across the canvas like a comic strip. Italian by birth and Parisian by adoption, his earliest childhood drawings were of Milan in ruins in the aftermath of the war. After an introduction to painting at Felice Carena's studio in Venice, where he also met Oskar Kokoschka, he studied at the Milan Academy of Fine Arts between 1952 and 1954. He emerged with a style strongly influenced by Matta's surrealism, which characterized the works presented at his first solo exhibition in 1957. His life was subsequently divided between France and Italy, while he developed his figurative language between trips to India and Cuba. Themes such as consumer society, women, history, literature, music and poetry gradually found their way into his paintings, characterized by fragmented surfaces saturated with bright colors. During the 1960s and 1970s, Adami moved in the circles of narrative figuration and new realism, with whom he shared a similar political commitment and attachment to the representation of reality. Shortly after moving to Paris in 1970, the Musée d'Art Moderne devoted an exhibition to him, followed in 1985 by the Centre Pompidou, then the Grand Palais (exhibition 'La Figuration Narrative', 2008).