Piero Gilardi

Artist biography

Piero Gilardi is a contemporary artist considered well established, who was born in Italy - other established artists such as Antonio Di Falco, Sandro De Alexandris, Marcello Pozzi, Francesco Messina, and Rabarama were also born in Italy. Piero Gilardi was born in 1942.

Galleries and Exhibitions

Multiple galleries around the world represent and exhibit Piero Gilardi's work, including galleries in countries such as France and Italy. The galleries exhibiting Piero Gilardi's work include Semiose in Paris, Erica Ravenna in Rome, and Galleria Fumagalli in Milan. Piero Gilardi's work has most recently been displayed during the exhibition Oltre il Colore come Tabù at Galleria Enrico Astuni in Bologna, Italy. The exhibition was open from 21 July 2018 until 09 September 2018. Piero Gilardi's other most recent exhibitions listed on Artland include the exhibitions at; Isorropia Homegallery in Milan (29 November 2019 - 05 January 2020) with the name Miscellanea and Gagliardi e Domke Contemporary in Turin (29 October 2019 - 09 April 2020) with the name Reale Virtuale. Piero Gilardi's first recorded exhibition in Artland's database was called Oltre il Colore come Tabù and took place at Galleria Enrico Astuni in Bologna, Italy from the 21 July 2018 to 09 September 2018.

Historical Context of Italy

Italy has been vastly rich in cultural influence since the time of the Romans, this classical period has exerted a fascinating influence on the cultural growth and identity of the country. Italy is also the realm of the Renaissance, called 'Rinascita' in Italian, meaning 'rebirth'. The Renaissance has been considered, from the early 1400s, as the first extensive flowering of cultural sophistication in art, architecture, music, poetry, philosophy and politics since the Middle Ages. Throughout the modern and contemporary period, Italy was tormented by the fascism of Mussolini but has nonetheless endured as an important centre for artistic expression, initiating movements such as Futurism, Arte Povera and the Minimalism related to the Zero Movement, as well as the expressive painting of the Transavanguardia. Important Italian artists of the twentieth and twenty first centuries include Giorgio Di Chirico, Giacomo Balla, Giorgio Morandi, Alberto Giacometti, Lucio Fontana, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Francesco Clemente and Mimmo Paladino.

Further Biographical Context for Piero Gilardi

Born in 1942, Piero Gilardi was as deeply indebted to the events of the 1960s as their formative influences. The 1960s were a sensational decade internationally, bearing witness to proliferation of modernist philosophies and trends. It was the era of Kennedy and Kruschev, and the beginning of the Cold War, which would endure for most of the second half of the twentieth century, and was epitomised most symbolically by the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The Iron Curtain divided Eastern and Western Europe, both ideologically and literally, and student political uprisings took place globally. Psychedelia, an vast increase in consumerism, and the associated trends of marketing and advertising further defined the era. Minimalism developed a formal language with no external references, predicated solely on line, colour and geometric form as key elements of both painting and sculpture. The key figures of Minimalism included Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Agnes Martin. Colour Field painting, as practiced by Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Helen Frankenthaler, further explored some of the expressive notions of Abstract Expressionism, but removed much of the rhetoric, instead approaching a more rule-based approach to surface and colour that associated this practice with Minimalism. Around the world a number of artistic movements resonated the creative concerns of the previously mentioned movements, often with regional specialties and nuance. In Italy, Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni developed Spatialism, and in Germany the Zero group under the leadership of Gunter Uecker espoused similar ideas. The influential school of Existentialist Philosophy was an important source of inspiration for creatives, with artists like Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti becoming known worldwide for their distinguishing approaches to the human form and the angst related to the human condition.