Elio Marchegiani

Elio Marchegiani was born in Syracuse in 1929 and, starting from 1934, he spent his childhood and youth in Livorno, a city that together with Pisa will see him as a student at the classical high school and then in university law courses but above all propitiatory to the meeting with Mario Nigro who will influence the his destiny as an artist. Not otherwise, the subsequent acquaintance of Gianni Bertini is equally decisive for the further step suggested by that artist, to leave the province for metropolises such as Paris, Milan, Rome and other cities more suitable for the development of his work. His first personal exhibition was held in 1958 at the Giraldi gallery in Livorno. The following year he took part in the 8th Rome Quadrennial, while in Florence he took part in group 70 and became friends with Giuseppe Chiari. Meanwhile, the interest in the relationship between art and science is growing in Marchegiani and will become constant in his work. During the 1960s, the Apollinaire galleries (Milan) directed by Guido Le Noci and the Obelisk (Rome) directed by Gaspero Del Corso collaborated with him. In 1968 he received the gold medal of the A.I.C.A. (International association of art critics chaired by Giulio Carlo Argan). Between 1971 and 1973 he created "the tires" brought to the Venice Biennale in 1972. In light of the "doing to make people think" principle, he conceived in these years the "Grammature di colore", a geometric-abstract synthesis of the Italian fresco. Examples of these creations are present at the GNAM in Rome, at the Museo del Novecento and at the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan. Since 1979 he has held the chair of Materials Technology and laboratory research at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino where he will subsequently be appointed to the chair of painting, becoming the director of that institution from 1983 to 1988. After the research on movement and luce works on the reconstruction of Giacomo Balla's "Feu d'artifice". For Marchegiani, a frequentation of mathematicians and scientists begins and his conception declares that "art is an exact science that has had the good fortune not to be". For several years he has lived and worked in Pianoro Vecchio (BO).