Piero Dorazio was born in Rome on 29 June 1927.
In 1945, together with Achille Perilli, Mino Guerrini, Lucio Manisco, Carlo Aymonino, Carlo Busiri Vici, Alfio Barbagallo and Renzo Vespignani he founded the Ariete group and later the Gruppo Arte Sociale.
In 1947, with Giulio Turcato, Concetto Maugeri, Antonio Sanfilippo and Carla Accardi he founded the Forma 1 group and published its manifesto in the magazine of the same name. In the same year, he travelled to Paris for the first time where, thanks to Gino Severini, he met leading international artists including Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Hans Arp and Alberto Magnelli.
In 1953, he was invited to Harvard University to take part in an international seminar on humanism and the arts. He moved to New York where he forged ties with many American artists and where he presented his first exhibition of drawings in George Wittenborn's One-wall Gallery.
In April 1954, the Rose Fried Gallery hosted his first solo exhibition in New York.
In New York, he frequented the new American artists, including Motherwell, Ferber, Glarner, Rothko, Kiesler, de Kooning, Cornell, Kline, Frankenthaler and the critic Clement Greenberg.
From 1954 to 1959 he resided permanently in Rome.In 1960, he was invited to the University of Pennsylvania to reconceive and direct the Fine Arts Department at the School of Fine Arts, which, in the 1960s, had been recognised as the best school of art and architecture in America. He taught there from 1960 to 1969, also lecturing at other universities.
In 1970 he returned to Rome and re-established himself there.
In 1975, he bought an old Camaldolese hermitage in Todi, renovated it, lived there and converted the church into his studio, while for years he spent the summer in his studio-house in Rhodes.In 1983 he opened a retrospective of his work at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, and participated with a selection of works in the exhibition 'Italian Art 1960-1980' at the Hayward Gallery in London.
In 1986 he was awarded the Premio dell'Accademia di San Luca and in 1988 he presented his one-man show at the Venice Biennale.In the early 1980s one of his major exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris travelled to major American museums and ended at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome.
In 1985 and 1986 he made his debut in Tokyo and Osaka.
Subsequently, his exhibitions continued to expand and consolidate his cultural presence in the most important European cities, while he received prestigious awards: member of the Accademia di San Luca; of the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin; awarded the Prix Kandinsky and the International Prize of the Paris Biennale; the Michelangelo Prize of the Accademia dei Virtuosi.
He died in Perugia on 17 May 2005.
