Verona, 1905 – Milan, 1959

Renato Birolli was born in Verona in 1905. In 1928 he moved to Milan and during the 1930s painted with a poetic and very personal style. In 1937 he joined the ‘Corrente’ group; his solo exhibition in 1940 was the first exhibition in the gallery opened by the group.

In the post-war period, he stays in Paris together with Morlotti; here, the post-cubist lesson and the trends of the French art scene strongly influenced his painting practice, which over time became increasingly abstract and symbolic. In 1946, he was one of the promoters of the Nuova Secessione Artistica, later Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, which won a room at the Venice Biennale in 1948. In 1950 he joined the Gruppo degli Otto, formed under the aegis of critic Lionello Venturi. Solo exhibitions at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York in 1951, 1957 and 1958 marked his international success and open up his work to new American pictorial tendencies.

In the 1950s, he spent long periods of solitude working in various seaside locations, which became the inspiration for many of his paintings. In May 1957, he exhibited over fifty works at the Cavellini Collection exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome and in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

He died suddenly in Milan in 1959.