Fabrizio Clerici Biography
Fabrizio Clerici was born in Milan on 15 May 1913.
A refined painter, set designer and illustrator, Clerici was an eclectic and curious artist, capable of creating dreamlike and enigmatic worlds full of charm, inspired by his vast classical and mythological culture, but also by the movements of his unconscious. His training as an architect and his meeting with Alberto Savinio marked his artistic path, oriented towards surrealism but with a metaphysical vision, which is expressed through the use of architectural elements, symbolism and symbolic play.
In 1937 he graduated in architecture in Rome, where he then came into contact with the artistic and intellectual environment of the capital. In 1945 he participated in two important group exhibitions, one in Rome at the La Margherita bookshop-gallery (with Leonor Fini and Alberto Savinio) and the other in New York at the Julien Levy Gallery (with Giuseppe Viviani). During these years, he also began to illustrate books such as "Il Bestiario" by Leoncillo Leonardi and "Il fu Mattia Pascal" by Luigi Pirandello. In 1947, he made his debut as a set designer on George Bernard Shaw's “Mrs. Warren's Profession,” beginning his prolific career in theater, ballet and opera. The following year, he participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale, where he met Salvador Dalí and collaborated on the creation of the sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky's Orpheus at the Teatro La Fenice. In 1953, he undertook a series of trips to the Middle East, bringing two important themes back to his art: that of Mirages and Temples, cycles of utopian constructions in the deserts that develop in a spiral starting from a central nucleus where an alleged primordial egg is located. . Clerici has been exhibited in important museums such as the MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Vatican Museums and prestigious private and public collections. He died in Rome on 7 June 1993
