Lugano
La nuova polaroid
1974
Acrylic on canvas
100x80cm
La Gabbia
1964
Acrylic on canvas
81 x 100 cm
Valerio Adami was born in Bologna on March 17, 1935; in 1944 his family settled in Milan. His training took him through the studio of Felice Carena, a meeting with Oskar Kokoschka in Venice and finally the Brera Academy, where he studied drawing under Achille Funi. From the outset, his interest lay in the structure of the image rather than its naturalistic rendering.
From 1958 he began a life of travel that would lead him to work in many European cities and in the United States, coming into contact with artists, writers and philosophers who would have a profound influence on his vision. In London he came to know the painting of Francis Bacon at close quarters, and in 1959 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. In the early 1960s he developed his distinctive style, characterised by flat areas of colour, sharp black outlines and fragmented compositions that evoke a mental rather than visual narrative. His style sits at the crossroads of Pop Art and European Nouvelle Figuration, and links him to the protagonists of Italian Pop such as Mario Schifano. In 1964 he took part in documenta III in Kassel and in 1968 in the Venice Biennale, consolidating his position on the international art scene. In 1966 he drew his portrait of Nietzsche, the first in a long series of “literary portraits” of writers and thinkers.
From 1970 he worked exclusively with the Galerie Maeght, and in 1971 he opened a studio in New York, where he would return for several months every year. For Adami, painting is a tool for thought, and drawing is always its starting point: the artist himself has compared line to the written word and colour to the voice that gives it sound. Between the 1970s and 1990s he created large pictorial cycles inspired by literature, myth, political history and personal memory, in which figures and elements from different eras coexist in a suspended dimension reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico. His work has been in dialogue with writers and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Octavio Paz and Italo Calvino, who in 1980 dedicated his Quattro fiabe d’Esopo per Valerio Adami (Four Aesop’s Fables for Valerio Adami) to him.
In 1985 the Centre Pompidou in Paris held a major retrospective of his work, shown the following year at Palazzo Reale in Milan. In 1988 the French State commissioned him to paint a portrait of the composer Pierre Boulez, and in 1989 he created large paintings for the foyer of the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. A retrospective at IVAM in Valencia (1990) and an exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid (1991) followed. In 1993 he designed the label for a historic 1926 vintage of The Macallan whisky, a bottle that set an auction record in 2023.
In 2000 the Fondazione Europea del Disegno (European Drawing Foundation) was established in Meina, on Lake Maggiore, where he lives. In 2024 Palazzo Reale in Milan celebrated sixty-five years of his career with the anthological exhibition Valerio Adami. Pittore di idee (Painter of Ideas), and in 2025 his ninetieth birthday was marked by numerous exhibitions, including the presentation of the monumental triptych Intolerance (1974) at Art Basel Unlimited. In 2026 he returned to New York, more than twenty years after his last solo show there, with Alice in the Land of Violence at David Nolan Gallery. Since 2021 the Archivio Valerio Adami, established by his family, has safeguarded and documented his work. To this day, his painting stands out for its ability to turn the image into a field of critical and cultural reflection.
The authenticity of Adami’s works is certified by the Archivio Valerio Adami, which is preparing the artist’s Catalogue Raisonné. For information on available original paintings by Adami, contact the gallery.