Valerio ADAMI

Valerio Adami – Biography, Original Lithographs and Screenprints

Valerio Adami, born in Bologna on 17 March 1935, is an Italian painter and draughtsman who has spent most of his working life in France, and who now divides his time between Paris and Meina on Lake Maggiore. Trained at the Brera Academy in Milan, he arrived in the mid-1960s at one of the most recognisable styles of post-war European painting: a heavy black contour line enclosing flat areas of pure colour, with no shading at all. Critics associated him with French Narrative Figuration and with Pop Art; he showed at documenta III (1964) and the Venice Biennale (1968), and was given a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in 1985-86. His original prints – mostly lithographs and screenprints, many published by Maeght – are the most accessible way to collect his work.

Le Coin des Arts follows Valerio Adami’s work closely and offers his original prints as and when they become available, chosen, like every piece we handle, for quality of impression, edition, provenance and condition. To be told when a new work arrives, simply ‘follow the artist’ on this page.

A draughtsman’s training: Venice and the Brera

Adami’s family moved from Bologna to Milan in 1944. At about ten he began painting in the studio of Felice Carena in Venice, where he also met Oskar Kokoschka. In 1951 he entered the Accademia di Brera in Milan and studied drawing until 1954 under Achille Funi, a painter steeped in classical and neoclassical models; he took his diploma in 1955. The lesson stayed with him: in Adami’s work the drawing always comes first and colour follows. In the mid-1950s he discovered Paris, which would become his adopted city, and met Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam, whose Surrealism coloured his early canvases. His first significant solo show was held at the Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, in 1959.

The London years, 1961-1964

Between 1961 and 1964 Adami divided his time between London and Paris. In London he met Richard Hamilton, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland, William Scott and Jim Dine – a decisive encounter with the British side of Pop. His paintings of these years, still loosely expressionist, began to borrow the language of comic strips, their framing and their onomatopoeia; works such as Alice nel paese della violenza (1963) belong to this moment. The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London is among the institutions that have given him a solo exhibition. In 1962 he married the painter Camilla and settled at Arona on Lake Maggiore.

Kassel, Venice and the black line, 1964-1969

Invited to documenta III in Kassel in 1964, and shown in Milan in 1965 by Studio Marconi and the Galleria Schwarz, Adami settled his visual grammar around 1966: black outlines, unmodulated colour, bodies and objects cut up and reassembled like a film montage. A first trip to New York the same year fed a series of hotel interiors and city views. In 1968 the Venice Biennale devoted a room to him, and in 1969 he exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. The label ‘Narrative Figuration’ followed him, though he never fully accepted it.

Paris, Maeght and Derrida, 1970-1984

Adami moved to Paris in 1970; that year the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris held his first retrospective and the Galerie Maeght showed him, with issue 188 of Derrière le miroir (November 1970). In 1971 he made the film Vacances dans le désert with his brother Giancarlo. His pictures now drew on literature, philosophy, mythology and art history, with portraits of James Joyce and Sigmund Freud and words written into the image. In 1974 he published Das Reich in Munich with the poet Helmut Heißenbüttel. In 1975 Jacques Derrida wrote ‘+R (par-dessus le marché)’ on his drawings for Derrière le miroir no. 214, later collected in La Vérité en peinture; Adami replied in 1976 with his Étude pour un dessin d’après Glas. Italo Calvino, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Octavio Paz also wrote on his work. He settled in Monte Carlo in 1981.

Retrospectives and public commissions, 1985 to today

The Centre Pompidou retrospective, curated by Alfred Pacquement, ran from 4 December 1985 to 10 February 1986 and travelled to Milan’s Palazzo Reale. Exhibitions followed in Valencia (IVAM, 1990), Madrid (1991) and Tel Aviv (1996). Adami also worked on an architectural scale: a ceramic wall for the art school at Cergy-Pontoise (1981), stained glass for the town hall of Vitry-sur-Seine, large paintings for the concourse of the Gare d’Austerlitz (1987) and the façade of the Théâtre du Châtelet (1989). Represented since 2004 by Galerie Templon, he was included in the Grand Palais survey Figuration narrative in 2008; an 80th-birthday retrospective toured Turin, Mantua and Perpignan in 2015, the Vienna Secession showed his pre-1964 drawings in 2016, and Milan’s Palazzo Reale staged Pittore di idee from 17 July to 22 September 2024. His work is in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Fondation Maeght and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others.

Adami’s printmaking: publishers, printers and editions

Contour and flat colour translate naturally into print, and Adami has worked extensively in lithography and screenprinting, more rarely in etching and aquatint. His principal publisher is Maeght Éditeur, with plates printed at Adrien Maeght’s Arte workshop in Paris: MoMA holds the aquatint The Chief’s Signature (1970; Maeght, printed by Arte, edition of 75), and the lithograph Pelouse interdite (1976) was printed in 75 impressions on Arches wove. The issues of Derrière le miroir devoted to him (no. 188, 1970; no. 214, 1975; no. 220, 1976) contain original colour lithographs printed by Arte alongside reproductions. Das Reich (Munich, 1974) contains ten screenprints in an edition of 450 signed copies. As far as we know, no catalogue raisonné of Adami’s prints has been published, so an impression is identified by title, date, technique, publisher and edition; the Archivio Valerio Adami, founded in 2021, documents the work as a whole. See our guide to lithography and to what makes an original print.

Collecting Valerio Adami prints: a buyer’s guide

Edition. Several 1970s Maeght editions run to 75 impressions; others are far larger. Check the number against the declared edition, and read our notes on the printing.

Signature. Edition prints are signed ‘Adami’ in pencil and numbered. A signature printed in the plate is no substitute for a hand signature.

Publisher and printer. A Maeght blindstamp or an Arte imprint is a useful marker. In the absence of a catalogue raisonné, ask for the publisher’s documentation or an invoice trail.

Derrière le miroir. Lithographs taken from the magazine are genuine original lithographs, but unsigned, unnumbered and often folded at the centre; only the de luxe copies are signed. Do not confuse them with the collotype reproductions in the same issues.

Posters. Adami designed many exhibition posters, some printed in lithography. They are attractive but worth a fraction of a signed print, and an offset poster is a reproduction.

Condition. Large flat areas show every scuff, fade or handling crease. Examine the sheet in raking light, and use UV-filtering glazing when framing. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page.

We select prints by artists who, like Adami, set line, colour and popular imagery in dialogue: Roy Lichtenstein, Enrico Baj, Jean-Michel Folon, Alekos Fassianos and Francis Bacon. Explore contemporary art and our etchings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Adami, exhibition catalogue, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1985 · Amelia Valtolina (ed.), Adami 1964-1999: The Years in London, Paris, New York, Mexico City…, Skira / Fondazione Marconi, 2016 · Jacques Derrida, La Vérité en peinture, Flammarion, 1978 · MoMA – The Chief’s Signature, 1970 · Fondazione Marconi – Valerio Adami · Meer – Alice in the Land of Violence · The Annex Galleries – Valerio Adami