Piero DORAZIO

Piero Dorazio – Life, Lithographs and Original Prints

Piero Dorazio (born in Rome on 29 June 1927, died in Perugia on 17 May 2005) was one of the leading Italian abstract painters of the post-war generation. A co-founder of the Roman group Forma 1 in 1947, he moved easily between Rome, Paris, London, Berlin and the United States, taught for a decade at the University of Pennsylvania and spent his last thirty years in Umbria, near Todi. His canvases of woven bands and luminous grids of colour have been linked to Concrete art, to American colour-field painting and to the German ZERO artists; his original prints, above all his lithographs and aquatints, carry the same chromatic intelligence onto paper.

Le Coin des Arts currently offers four original lithographs by Dorazio, all published in St Gallen, Switzerland, by the Galerie im Erker and its press, the Erker-Presse: a small sheet from the 1967 portfolio Hommage à Hans Arp (edition of 100), and three prints from the Erker-Treffen publications – Erker-Treffen 2 (1974), Erker-Treffen 3 (1976) and Erker-Treffen 4 (1987), each from an edition of 200 and signed in pencil. They were chosen for fresh colour, crisp printing, legible numbering and sound paper.

A Roman Beginning: War, Architecture and Forma 1

Born Piero D’Orazio, he left Rome with his family in 1943 for their native Abruzzo. After the war he worked briefly as a translator for the British Army before reading architecture at the University of Rome (1945–1951). The Futurists Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini drew him towards painting. In 1947 he signed the manifesto of Forma 1 with Pietro Consagra, Achille Perilli, Giulio Turcato and others, defending abstraction against the realism then dominant in Italy. A French government scholarship took him that year to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met Jean Arp, Georges Braque, Sonia Delaunay, Le Corbusier, Antoine Pevsner and Georges Vantongerloo.

Organiser and Writer: L’Age d’Or, Origine and the Venice Biennale

Back in Rome, Dorazio opened the bookshop-gallery L’Age d’Or in 1950 with Perilli and Mino Guerrini, and in 1952 promoted the Origine foundation with Alberto Burri and Ettore Colla, editing its review Arti Visive. He showed at the Venice Biennale that same year. An invitation to Harvard’s International Summer Seminar in 1953 was followed by a year in New York and a first solo show at George Wittenborn’s One-Wall Gallery. From 1954 he was based in Rome again but travelled regularly to Paris, London and Berlin, where he came to know the critic Will Grohmann and the dealer Rudolf Springer. His book La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna (1955) is described as the first survey of international modern art published in Italy. By the late 1950s his paintings had become dense meshes of hatched strokes – the ‘trame’ (weaves) admired by Heinz Mack and the German ZERO artists – and in 1959 he was shown at documenta II in Kassel.

Philadelphia, London and The Responsive Eye (1960–1969)

From 1960 to 1969 Dorazio taught one semester a year at the Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and in 1963 he helped to found its Institute of Contemporary Art. Europe recognised him in parallel: a room of his own at the 1960 Venice Biennale, the Prix Kandinsky in 1961 and a place at documenta III in 1964. In 1965 his work appeared in The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. That same year he painted Very Sharp, the canvas now in the Tate collection in London. In January 1966 Marlborough Fine Art in London gave him an exhibition, with a catalogue introduced by the Italian critic Nello Ponente; he returned to the Venice Biennale later that year.

Umbria, Retrospectives and the Rome Metro (1970–2005)

Dorazio returned to Italy in 1970, travelled in Greece, Africa and the Middle East, and in 1974 moved his studio from Rome to a former hermitage near Todi. Major retrospectives followed at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1979), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo (1979) and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome (7 December 1983 – 5 February 1984), with a further room at the 1988 Venice Biennale. In the 1990s he directed a programme of mosaics for Rome’s Underground stations, making one himself. A member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, he was honoured in 2003 with a large retrospective at IVAM in Valencia, two years before his death.

Dorazio as a Printmaker: Lithographs, Aquatints and the Simongini Catalogue

Printmaking runs through Dorazio’s career. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis holds a lithograph of 1957, and from the early 1960s he worked in etching and aquatint with Roman printers such as Renzo Romero, later with printers near Todi. Among his publishers, the Erker-Presse of St Gallen – the lithographic press of the Galerie im Erker founded by Franz Larese and Jürg Janett – holds a special place. It published the 1967 portfolio Hommage à Hans Arp, to which Giuseppe Santomaso also contributed, and the Erker-Treffen sheets of 1974, 1976 and 1987. In Erker-Treffen 2, a folded sheet, Dorazio’s lithograph faces a lithographed poem by Peter Huchel. In 1971 the same press issued Giuseppe Ungaretti’s La Luce. Poesie 1914–1961 with lithographs by Dorazio, a fine example of the illustrated book.

The standard reference is Piero Dorazio. L’opera incisa (1962–1993), edited by Gabriele Simongini (Edizioni Pananti, Florence, 1995), a catalogue raisonné of 327 prints – etchings, aquatints, lithographs and screenprints – with editions and states. A dealer’s reference such as “Simongini 325” gives the catalogue number. Lithographs made before 1962 and prints after 1993 fall outside it. A separate catalogue raisonné of the paintings and sculptures, prepared by the Archivio Piero Dorazio in Milan, has been announced by Skira in 2026.

Collecting Piero Dorazio’s Prints: A Buyer’s Guide

Edition and numbering. The Erker-Presse sheets offered here are numbered in pencil from editions of 100 (Hommage à Hans Arp) or 200 (Erker-Treffen). Some Italian aquatints were issued in several series – Arabic and Roman numerals, lettered copies and proofs. See the printing.

Signature. Original prints are signed by hand in pencil, usually lower right. A signature printed in the image points to a poster or reproduction. See the signature.

Catalogue raisonné. For intaglio prints of 1962–1993, ask for the Simongini number. For the St Gallen editions, the Erker-Presse imprint and the title of the publication identify the sheet.

Complete sheets. Prints from portfolios or folded sheets, like Erker-Treffen 2, are best kept whole, with their accompanying text.

Posters. Dorazio’s posters for the Munich Olympics (1972) and the Sarajevo Winter Olympics (1984) circulate widely: they are not signed and numbered original prints. See what is an original print.

Condition. Pure bands of colour are sensitive to light and show every scuff. Check for even colour and fading, and choose framing with UV-filtering glazing. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page.

Le Coin des Arts selects Dorazio’s lithographs for quality of impression and provenance. His work sits well alongside that of Hans Arp, Giuseppe Santomaso, Max Bill, Fritz Wotruba and Bernhard Heiliger, fellow Erker-Presse artists. Explore also contemporary art and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Gabriele Simongini (ed.), Piero Dorazio. L’opera incisa (1962–1993), Edizioni Pananti, Florence, 1995 · Piero Dorazio, text by Nello Ponente, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1966 · Piero Dorazio, a Retrospective, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1979 · Francesca Pola, Spaces of Light. Piero Dorazio and the International ZERO Movement, Skira, Milan, 2021 · Tate – Piero Dorazio · Peggy Guggenheim Collection – Piero Dorazio · documenta – II. documenta (1959) · Walker Art Center – Lithograph #12, 1957