Artists. Sandro Chia     

In 1971 he put on his first exhibition at Galleria La Salita in Rome, but he made his real artistic debut only in the late 1970s. After an initial period of action painting, in the 1980s he became part of the Transavanguardia movement and a leading international exponent of the return to a pictorial language. Chia is at present also working with sculpture, referring to his role and to his works as those of an alchemist of form, as a bricoleur and transformer. As has always been the case in his works, however, the pleasure of painting and sculpture is accompanied by the pleasure of the word, and the witticism that supplements his artistic creations with the precautionary detachment of irony: his works have always been accompanied by captions or short poems that define their interpretative direction. 

Some of his exhibitions include De statua: Aspetti della scultura italiana del Novecento, galleria Open Art, Prato, 2003; Sandro e/o Sandro: Short Stories, Studio Guastalla, Milan, 2004; Transavanguardia. La Collezione Grassi, MART, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, 2004; Arte ’70, Studio d’Arte Cannaviello, Milan 2005; Chia+Clemente+Paladino: La Transavanguardia a Bologna, DIPaoloArte, Bologna, 2006; Fe/Male: Identità del corpo, Galleria l’Ariete, Bologna, 2006; Effetto giorno, Mucciaccia Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, 2006; Food, Studio Guastalla, Milan, 2006, Transavanguardia-Opere dalla Collezione Grassi, MAN Museo D’Arte della Provincia di Nuoro, Nuoro, 2006, Il Marmo e la Celluloide, La Versiliana, Marina di Pietrasanta, 2006, Arcani Maggiori, Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, 2007, Interni Romani, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, 2007, Arte Italiana 1968-2007 Pittura, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2007, Goffredo Parise e gli artisti, GNAM, Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna, Rome, 2007, Percorsi privati, MART, Rovereto, 2007, Percorsi del Novecento, Satura-Palazzo Stella, Genoa, 2007, Il Novecento, Palazzo Coelli, Orvieto, 2008, Italics. Arte Italiana fra tradizione e rivoluzione 1968-2008, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2008.