Born into a family of master ceramicists, Oliviero Leonardi (1921 - 2019) was an Italian painter and sculptor based in Rome and Paris. He was largely recognized in the 1970/80s as one of the leader in painting with experimental materials on steel plates baked in oven at high fire (at 900 degrees Celsius). His artistic research focused, among others, on the subject of cosmogony. He was partially influenced by futurism, surrealism, cubism and art informel.
In the 1970/80s, he had more than 25 collective and solo exhibitions in major art galleries in Italy, France, Spain, Monaco, Germany and Luxembourg. He exhibited with a collective of artists including Giorgio De Chirico, Salvador Dalà and Joan Miró during the 1975 Contemporary Art Exhibition in Fiuggi, Italy. His work was also exhibited at the Maschio Angioino, the Centro di Cultura Italiana, the Saarland Museum, the Van Gogh House Museum and the Limoges Biennale, and commissioned for public spaces including the metro in the city of Rome and the Pan-American headquarters in New York.Â
Following two decades of successful exhibitions, Oliviero Leonardi detached from the world of art on his own, and slowly started creating art for himself from the 1990s until his passing few years ago. His efforts, art, beliefs, innovative art techniques, numerous exhibitions, ideas, friends, and critics, namely his work and art as a whole, were almost completely forgotten.
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