Francesco Piazza - Painter and Etcher

Francesco Piazza was born in Venice in 1931. His artistic activity started in Treviso when he was still very young.

He took part in important art exhibitions during the years '51-'56, such as the Biennale d'Arte Triveneta in Padua, the Biennale Internazionale d'Arte in Venice, the Mostra dell'Incisione Contemporanea at the Opera Bevilacqua - La Masa in Venice, the Incontri della Gioventù in Rome, the Mostra Nazionale del Disegno e dell'Incisione Moderna in Reggio Emilia, the Mostra Triveneta del Bianco e Nero in Udine.

The noblest tradition of graphics in Veneto reveals with Francesco Piazza a remarkable and unique expression, a creative sensitivity, mildly controlled by an aristocratic culture. He has deserved preeminent placements in many exhibitions in Italy and abroad: IV Triveneta delle Arti; Celebrazioni di Aldo Manuzio; Contemporary Italian Artists in Cleveland and Boston; Grafica Veneta Contemporanea during the Celebration Regione Veneto - URSS in Moscow, Puskin Museum and in Alma Ata, Modern Arts Gallery; Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, Idecom S.A. of Geneva; Castelfranco, Giorgione's House; Venice, Scuola Grande of S.John the Evangelist; Biennale "Arte a Treviso"; Arte Fiera of Bologna; Arte Fiera of Padua; Biennale di Incisione "Alberto Martini" of Oderzo; "Print Europe", Barbican Centre of London.

He has published several etching folders for Public Bodies, Public Administrations, Private Firms and Art Publishers.

Monographic essays on his artistic work, with critical introduction and reviews, have been issued by several Publishing Companies.

The Rai and other Television and Radio Broadcasting Companies, local and national daily news, qualified art magazines, both Italian and International, have dedicated to the artist many reports and interviews.

The leitmotif of Francesco Piazza's painting is a persistent vein of vigorous melancholy which pierces nature and objects, concealed however, by the Olympian calm of the representation.

This is what dominates the paintings, despite the abundant Orphean seductiveness of the chromatic tissue, and which also dominates the graphic work, where the blank spaces, in particular, accomplish a mainly pictorial function.

Piazza's language is therefore highly personalized. Founded on the objectification of images of reality, it promptly transforms these images into carriers of a lyrical message. Indeed, the irreplaceable interlocutor, for Piazza, is nature, often caught in its most simple and humble aspects. It is in the microcosm of nature that he passes his days. A brief universe, but abode of prodigies when, revisited daily, it is an endless source of creative inspiration to the artist.

This universe has become a space for the mind in which the artist lives and suffers, in the literal sense of the word, every internal vibration, every secret movement: the changing of the hours which gives the same plant, the same stone a different and unexpected appearance, the slow changing of the seasons which that universe reabsorbs into the mistery of the Whole. (Carlo Munari)

PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS

Munich - Italian Kultur Institut und Europäisches Patentamt
Augsburg - Civic Museum
Wraclaw - National Museum
Wien - Italian Culture Institut
Sidney - Dante Alighieri Society
Paris - B.I.M.C. Galerie
Asolo - Castello Cornaro
Mantua - Basilica Palatina and Sacred Art Museum
Venice - Sacred Art Museum
Piazzola sul Brenta - Villa Contarini
Roma - Libreria Croce
Pavia - Università degli Studi
Cortina - Terrazza Cortina
Roma - Circolo S.Pietro
Pontremoli - Premio Bancarella
Toronto - Downsview Library
Urbino - Università degli Studi