Sandro Chia (born 20 April 1946) is an Italian painter and sculptor. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was, with Francesco Clemente,

Enzo Cucchi Enzo Cucchi (born 14 November 1949) is an Italian painter. A native of Morro d'Alba, province of Ancona, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with his countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria ...

, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino, a principal member of the Italian Neo-Expressionist movement which was baptised Transavanguardia by

Achille Bonito Oliva Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contempo ...

Life

Chia was born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

, in

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

in central Italy, on 20 April 1946. He studied at the from 1962 to 1967, and then, until 1969, at the

Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze ("academy of fine arts of Florence") is an instructional art academy in Florence, in Tuscany, in central Italy. It was founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, under the influence of Giorgio Vasari. M ...

. He then travelled in Europe, in Turkey and in India. He settled in Rome in 1970, and began to show work in the following year. He spent the winter of 1980–1981 in

Mönchengladbach Mönchengladbach (, li, Jlabbach ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located west of the Rhine, halfway between Düsseldorf and the Dutch border. Geography Municipal subdivisions Since 2009, the territory of Möncheng ...

, in Nordrhein-Westfalen in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...

, on a study grant. Later that year he moved to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

in the United States, where he lived for more than twenty years. In 1984–1985 he taught at the

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Work

Chia's early work tended towards Conceptualism, but from the mid-1970s he began to turn towards more a figurative approach. In June 1979 showed work by Chia, Francesco Clemente,

, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino at his gallery in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, in Germany. In an article in '' Flash Art'' in the same year, the critic

characterised the group as a new

art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...

, which he called " Transavanguardia".

Notes

References

External links

Artist official website
1946 births Living people 20th-century Italian sculptors 20th-century Italian male artists Italian male sculptors Painters from Florence Italian watercolourists Italian contemporary artists Recipients of the Italian Order of Merit for Culture and Art Transavanguardia Neo-expressionist artists Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze alumni {{Italy-painter-20thC-stub