Valerio Adami 1935 -

Valerio Adami (Italian, b. 1935)

Valerio Adami is internationally renowned as an important European artist. He is generally acknowledged to have three major periods within his art-making practice. In his early Pop-related works, he shows isolated fragments of society as we know it, where objects are taken out of perspective and context allowing us to see them with fresh eyes. With no visible signs of life, they are, by and large, sleek designer visions of the world. His middle period focused on historical moments and heroes of modern culture like James Joyce, Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin. His most recent period has resulted in works which are, in many ways, his most attractive and interesting. They show his desire to create a space to dream and fantasize. Using myths of Western culture and history and peopling his works with characters from Ovid and others, he allows us to contemplate desire, sexuality, creativity and beauty.

He has been honoured by, in 1985, a full-scale retrospective at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris and the Communo of Milano. In 1962, he had his first major show in London at the Institute of Contemporary Art and soon after was shown at Documenta III in Cassel. In 1968 he represented Italy at the Venice Biennale. Since that time he has had major exhibitions around the world including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Palazzo Reale in Milan as well as the museums of Caracas, Ulm, Hamburg, Bordeaux, Marseille, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Siena, Venice, Aix-en-Provence and Mexico City.

He has also been the subject of critical studies by Jacques Derrida, Italo Calvino, Jean-Francois Lyotard and others.