Sandro Chia (born 20 April 1946) is an Italian painter and sculptor.[2] In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was, with Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino, a principal member of the Italian Neo-Expressionist movement which was baptised Transavanguardia by Achille Bonito Oliva.[3]
Sandro Chia | |
|---|---|
| Born | Alessandro Chia[1] 20 April 1946[a] Florence, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Movement | Transavanguardia |
| Website | sandrochia.com (archived) |
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Life
Chia was born in Florence, in Tuscany in central Italy, on 20 April 1946. He studied at the Istituto d'Arte di Firenze from 1962 to 1967,[1] and then, until 1969, at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze.[2] He then travelled in Europe, in Turkey and in India.[4][5] He settled in Rome in 1970, and began to show work in the following year.[4][5] He spent the winter of 1980–1981 in Mönchengladbach, in Nordrhein-Westfalen in West Germany, on a study grant.[2] Later that year he moved to New York in the United States, where he lived for more than twenty years.[4][6] In 1984–1985 he taught at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.[1]
Work
Chia's early work tended towards Conceptualism, but from the mid-1970s he began to turn towards more a figurative approach.[4][5] In June 1979 Paul Maenz showed work by Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino at his gallery in Cologne, in Germany.[7] In an article in Flash Art in the same year, the critic Achille Bonito Oliva characterised the group as a new art movement, which he called "Transavanguardia".[7]