Pier Paolo Calzolari (Bologna, 21 November 1943) was an Italian artist. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
He trained in Bologna and held his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Bentivoglio studio. Read the full biography
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Pier Paolo Calzolari (Bologna, 21 November 1943) was an Italian artist. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
He trained in Bologna and held his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Bentivoglio studio. From the following year he abandoned traditional painting techniques; in 1967, again in the Bentivoglio studio, he presented a work entitled "Filtri e Benvenuto degli Angeli" performance. He soon became one of the protagonists of Arte Povera. Among the materials most used by Calzolari we find ice, margarine, molten lead, neon fonts, metals, organic and natural, malleable materials, favoring relationships that involve the transformation of concepts and the addition of physical objects as an experience of time. In a bad artistic movement, he stands out for the poetic and literary quality of his work, acting at the limits of performance (Canto Pause, 1973). In 1978, 1980 and 1990 he participated in the Venice Biennale. In 1992 he participated in the ninth document in Kassel. In the 1980s he returned to traditional painting with metaphysical and existential abstractions that had previously been presented with emotional dimensions.
In 1994 an important retrospective was held at the Galleria Nazionale del Jeu de Paume in Paris and at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin.
