The Distance Open to Measure, 1988, oil on canvas, 78 47/64 × 165 23/64 in.
©Foto Massimo Listri
Piero Dorazio (Rome 1927 – Perugia 2005)
After completing his classical studies, he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture in Rome. In 1947, he was one of the founders of the Forma 1 group. In the same year, he met Braque, Léger and Arp while in Paris with Severini. In 1948, he participated in the Quadriennale in Rome and, together with Soldati and Sottsass, held the exhibition Arte astratta in Italia (Abstract Art in Italy). In 1950, with Perilli and Guerrini he opened the gallery-bookshop L’Age d’Or and in 1951 with Colla and Burri he formed Fondazione Origine. Invited to Harvard University, in 1953 he moved to New York. In 1955, after returning to Italy, he published the book La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna (The Fantasy of Art in Modern Life). He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1956 and 1958 and in Documenta in Kassel in 1959. He returned to the Biennale in 1960 with a solo exhibition and then moved back to the United States, where he spent a decade teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1960s, he exhibited in important collective shows, including The Responsive Eye at MoMA, and at the 1966 Venice Biennale. In 1968, he settled in Berlin, invited by
the German Academy. In the 1970s, he traveled to Greece, the Middle East and Africa, and in 1974 moved into a restored hermitage in Canonica, near Todi, in the province of Perugia. In 1979, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris dedicated a retrospective to the artist, which then traveled in the United States. In the 1980s, he continued to paint and began to collaborate with the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In 1983, GNAM dedicated a retrospective to him, and in 1988 he held another solo show at the Venice Biennale. Dorazio’s exhibitions in the 1990s include those at Musée de Grenoble in 1990, at the Civic Gallery of Bologna in 1991, at the Civic Museum of Athens in 1994 and at PAC in 1988. In 1993, he became a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and in 1994-96 he directed the project for the realization of a series of mosaics in the subway stations of Rome; he created one of the mosaics himself. In 2003, the IVAM of Valencia dedicated a large retrospective to him. His many awards include: the Kandinsky Prize and the Paris Biennale Prize (1961), the Accademia di San Luca Prize (1986), the Alcide De Gasperi Prize for Arts and Science (1990), the Michelangelo Prize from the Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon (1997) and the Scipione Prize from Fondazione Carima in Macerata (2000).
Exhibited at the 43rd Venice Biennale, this work was shown next to 13 others in Room 7 of the Italian Pavilion, curated by Giovanni Carandente. Along with the paintings, the exhibition also included poetry collections by Giuseppe Ungaretti, titled Secret Croatia and The Light. Poems 1914-1971, illustrated with etchings and lithographs by Dorazio. In the room—dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Ungaretti, who had been a close friend of Dorazio—a recording of the poet reading his poem Red and Blue was played regularly. The title of the work quotes a stanza from Ungaretti’s poem A Sense of Time, published in his second collection (1933): “And in just the right light, / With only a purple shadow falling, / Upon the yoke least high, / The distance open to measure, / As with the heart, my every beat, / But now I hear it, / Hurry up, time, and press on my lips / Your final kiss.” Representative of the compositional variety and stylistic freedom of Dorazio’s painting in the 1980s, The Distance Open to Measure is one of the artist’s greatest painted works for its grandeur and chromatic variety. Because of its “musical” qualities, the work was compared by critics to the compositions of famous jazz musician Charlie Parker, once again emphasizing the synaesthetic and spiritual nature of Dorazio’s abstractionism. (Valentina Sonzogni – Archivio Piero Dorazio)