OPENING: Thursday 14 March 2024 6 p.m.

from 14 March to 20 April 2024

Biasutti & Biasutti gallery is pleased to present the exhibition: “Omaggio a Piero Ruggeri” (A Homage to Piero Ruggeri). Twenty works that cover a period of time between 1956 and the 2000s. On display: Natura morta grigia (1956), Omaggio a Charlie Parker and L’uomo nella cattedrale both executed in 1957. Studio per due figure nel paesaggio (1958), Studio per il martirio di San Matteo (1958 -1960) and Paesaggio giallo e rosso (1962). Iridescenze 2 (1975), Interno rosso con figura e Collina nera (1984). An exhibition that summarizes an artistic career spanning over fifty years, a tribute to an exponent of Italian informal art almost fifteen years after his death.

Piero Ruggeri was born in Turin on 27^th April 1930. He died on 14th May 2009 in the country house in Avigliana where he lived and worked for the last forty years. He graduated in 1956 from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, and in the same year he was invited to the Venice Biennale. In 1955, 1957 and 1959, he took part in three editions of 'Italy - France' in his hometown. Ruggeri's work, which immediately took on an international scope, soon moved into the informal, albeit in the name of a peculiar language and motifs, placing itself in the most authentic heart of the Italian experience, centered on the activities of groups of painters active in Bologna, Milan, and Turin. He then assimilates the new emergencies of abstract expressionism, in which it is easy to identify the openness to European and American references. After all, Ruggeri is a 'cultured' painter, not only for his alert sensitivity and continuous filter of debate and contemporary experiences, but also for his critical review, excavation and dialogue, uninterrupted to this day, with the language of pictorial tradition emblematically witnessed by his many paintings which bear, in the titles, an explicit reference to Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Mattia Preti, Goya, Monet. He participates in numerous editions of the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrennial. He wins national and international prizes including: the Morgan's Paint Prize, Solomon Guggenheim New York, Marzotto, San Paolo in Brazil, Fiorino, Lissone, Villa S. Giovanni. Among the personal exhibitions we must mention: the room at the XXXI Venice Biennale, the anthologies of Palazzo Massari in Ferrara in 1984, at Villa Reale in Monza in 1985, at Circolo degli Artisti in Turin in 1986, at Liceo Saracco in Acqui Terme in 1993, at the Baptistery of S. Pietro in Asti, Municipal Art Gallery of Cesena, and Casa del Mantenga in Mantua. At Palazzo Bricherasio in Turin in 1998, at Palazzo Sarcinelli Galleria Comunale d'Arte of Conegliano (Treviso) in 2000, at Piccolo Miglio, at the Castle of Brescia in 2006, at Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia in 2008. A numerous series of solo exhibitions and collective sees his works exhibited, as well as in Italy, in France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, USA, Brazil, Russia, Egypt, Australia, Beijing-China, Abu Dhabi-United Arab Emirates. In 1995 he was appointed academician of S. Luca.